DUBAI, May 27 (Reuters) – Indebted telecoms operator Zain Saudi said on Sunday it would ask shareholders to approve a multibillion dollar capital restructuring after the market regulator endorsed the plan.

If successful, the Saudi affiliate of Kuwait’s Zain will reduce its issued share capital to 4.8 billion Saudi riyals ($1.28 billion) from 14 billion before launching a 6 billion riyals rights issue, it said in an emailed statement.

Bourse rules say listed firms must cut their capital if losses exceed 75 percent of share capital, while Zain Saudi will use the proceeds from the rights issue to ease its debts.

The operator, burdened by the high price it paid for mobile licences, has yet to make a quarterly net profit nearly four years after launching services in 2008.

Its accumulated losses now stand at 10.1 billion riyals, according to its first-quarter results.

The firm also had liabilities of 22.9 billion riyals as of March 31 and analysts say these debts and losses have left it struggling to compete with its better-resourced rivals.

Zain Saudi’s share of the kingdom’s mobile subscribers fell four percentage points to 12 percent in 2011, according to parent Zain’s annual report, leaving it a distant third to Saudi Telecom Co and Etihad Etisalat.

CAIRO/DUBAI May 23 (Reuters) – Foreign investors sold Egyptian stocks ahead of the first stage of presidential elections this week and are likely to remain cautious as traders doubt a new leader will be able to ease the country’s political and economic woes.

All candidates in the vote are promising more equal distribution of wealth, less corruption, better education and big industrial projects to boost the ailing economy after 15 months of military rule. Final results are due on June 21 and with no reliable opinion polls, no one knows who will win.

Investors fearing a new bout of political turmoil are uneasy over the line-up of top candidates – ranging from old-school army man Ahmed Shafiq, who is hated by the young revolutionaries who led the campaign to topple President Hosni Mubarak, to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi and leftist Hamdeen Sabahy.

Whoever eventually wins office will not know his ultimate powers because a new constitution has been delayed and faces an uphill struggle to head off a balance of payments crisis and rein in an unsustainable budget deficit.

“The market is not particularly enthusiastic about any of the candidates,” said Omar Darwish of brokerage CIBC in Cairo. “We’ve been seeing foreigners selling and don’t think that will change instantly with the decision on a new president.”

The Egyptian benchmark index has tumbled from its 2012 peak reached on March 7 as foreign reserves fell to levels seen by economists as dangerously low and the interim government struggled to secure emergency foreign funds.

The index is still up by about a third this year, after losing half its value in 2011, on hopes the military rulers can steer the country to stable civilian rule.

DUBAI (Reuters) – UAE telecom firm Etisalat ETEL.AD plans to cut international call tariffs to various countries by up to 30 percent, an executive said, as the former monopoly tries to win back market share and stem the spread of Internet-based phone calls.

The plans are at an early stage and need regulatory approval, but are likely to come into force in the second half of 2012, Rashed Alabbar, Etisalat vice-president for home product marketing, told Reuters.

Etisalat already has a favoured country call plan where customers can get up to 40 percent off standard tariffs.

“On top of that, we’re studying whether to further reduce international rates,” said Alabbar. “If we are going to implement something in landline, most probably it will also be in mobile because we wouldn’t cannibalise other product lines.

“(A) 10 to 30 percent (cut) is what we are currently looking at across local and international calls. It should cover the most popular destinations.”

These may include India, Philippines and Pakistan, which have large expatriate communities in the United Arab Emirates.

International calls are a crucial revenue source for Etisalat and rival operator du DU.DU, with about 89 percent of the UAE’s 8.3 million population foreigners.

DUBAI, May 22 (Reuters) – Dubai’s index rose for a third session in four on Tuesday as upbeat global markets buoyed sentiment, but late selling wiped out much of its intraday gains, with short-term retail traders dominant and seeking a quick profit.

Most Middle East markets were also up as investors worldwide bought into riskier assets on hopes European leaders would agree on fresh action to tackle the region’s debt crisis.

Dubai’s index climbed 0.6 percent, easing away from Wednesday’s 15-week low to take its 2012 gains to 10.6 percent.

“What we’re seeing now is daily trading from small speculators – they are watching global and regional markets and trading based on that,” said Samer al-Jaouni, general manager of Middle East Financial Brokerage Co. “People prefer to do daily trading. Institutions are cautious and prefer to watch.”

Traders focused on mid-cap, liquid stocks that are easy to enter and exit.

National Central Cooling Company (Tabreed) fell 1.6 percent and Islamic mortgage lender Tamweel dropped 0.9 percent, while builder Arabtec rose 0.7 percent. This trio accounted for more than a third of all shares changing hands.

In neighbouring Abu Dhabi, Aldar Properties and Sorouh Real Estate climbed 3.7 and 3.9 percent respectively, extending gains after sources told Reuters the emirate had picked four banks to advise on a potential merger of the two state-backed developers.

DUBAI, May 16 (Reuters) – Dubai’s index made its largest gain in three weeks on Thursday, rebounding from Wednesday’s 15-week low as early-morning gains in Asia drew in local bargain hunters, while Egypt extended losses ahead of next week’s presidential election.

Other Middle East markets ended mixed, with Abu Dhabi and Oman eking out minor gains while Kuwait and Qatar again fell.

Dubai’s index climbed 0.7 percent, its biggest rise since April 24, as volumes slumped to a four-month low. The benchmark has fallen 15.9 percent since a 16-month high on March 5, to be up 9 percent this year.

“If we don’t get something to move the markets between now and early June, we will probably be in this range until after Ramadan (in July/August),” said Mohammed Yasin, an Abu Dhabi-based capital markets specialist.

“There’s no news to move the market and the negative sentiment from outside looks like increasing rather than decreasing.”

Gulf stocks have slid in recent weeks, tracking declines in global markets that have been roiled by deepening turmoil in Greece and fears of contagion spreading to other stressed euro zone economies.

“The noise from Europe is unsettling, which is why we have this weak underlying tone in regional markets,” said Ibrahim Masood, senior investment officer at Mashreq Bank.

DUBAI, May 14 (Reuters) – Bahrain Telecommunications (Batelco) has scrapped plans to sell its transmitter towers in Bahrain and Jordan and will instead look to share infrastructure with rival operators, the former monopoly’s chief exective said on Monday.

In December, a source told Reuters that Batelco was considering a sale and lease back deal for its towers in the two countries, with funds raised earmarked for future acquisitions.

“Batelco has decided not to proceed with any tower sale in Bahrain and Jordan as various sale and lease back proposals did not create sufficient, long-term economic value,” Sheikh Mohamed Al-Khalifa said in an emailed statement.

The government-controlled firm owns Jordanian mobile operator Umniah, 27 percent of Yemeni mobile operator Sabafon, minority stakes in internet providers in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and is also active in Egypt.

Batelco, which secured investment-grade ratings in November, has cash and bank balances of 61.8 million dinars ($163.93 million) according to its first-quarter results.

This means Batelco “has the ability to raise funds at much lower rates than tower companies and thus could not justify the lease back arrangements”, Sheikh Mohamed said.

Batelco will instead look to share towers and other infrastructure with rival operators.

DUBAI, May 13 (Reuters) – Etisalat Nigeria, an affiliate of the No. 2 Gulf Arab operator Etisalat, said a lack of reliable electricity and sabotage were to blame for poor service after the regulator fined telecom firms for failing to meet quality targets.

Etisalat Nigeria, Airtel Nigeria, Globacom and MTN Nigeria, a unit of South’s Africa’s MTN, were fined a total of 1.17 billion naira ($7.43 million), according to local media reports.

Etisalat Nigeria said fines averaged $2 million per operator for “non-compliance with the quality of service targets set by the regulator”, according to an emailed statement.

“This year alone we are investing more than half a billion dollars in expansion of our network capabilities and capacity,” Chief Executive Steven Evans said.

The company said capacity constraints alone where not to blame for poor service, citing roadworks, sabotage and a lack of electricity as industry challenges.

“Foremost among these is the absence of reliable power which necessitates that every one of our over 3,000 cell sites needs to be served by two generators which run 24 hours a day and need regular maintenance and provision of weekly supplies of diesel,” it said.

Nigeria only provides its 167 million inhabitants with around a quarter of the amount of electricity used by New York City, leaving those who can afford it to use expensive diesel generators and those who cannot to live without any power.

DUBAI, May 3 (Reuters) – Saudi Telecom Co (STC) aims to connect 500,000 homes in the kingdom with optical fibre for highspeed broadband, but a lack of spectrum is limiting the adoption of next-generation mobile services, a top executive said on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia’s 26.5 million people had 1.95 million fixed broadband subscriptions at the end of 2011, according to the telecoms regulator, while of these only 18,500 are high-speed fibre-to-the-home (FFTH) connections, Informa Telecoms and Media estimates.

“With FTTH, we’re looking to pass 500,000 homes by the end of this year and go up to 2 million in 2013,” Jameel Al-Molhem, Saudi Telecom chief executive for Saudi Arabia, told a conference in Dubai.

Slumping margins on conventional voice calls have prompted STC and rivals Mobily, an affiliate of the United Arab Emirates’ Etisalat, and Zain Saudi to bet on soaring demand for broadband to bolster income.

That strategy seems to be working – STC’s first-quarter profit rose 60 percent, while its mobile broadband revenue was up 145 percent, Bahrain’s Securities & Investment Co (SICO) wrote in a note.

Potential further growth is huge, with only 41 percent of Saudis using the internet at the end of 2010, according the International Telecommunications Union’s most recent data.

Analysts say this relatively low penetration, which is barely half that of the neighouring United Arab Emirates, is partly due to a lack of fixed-line infrastructure in the vast kingdom that is more than twice the size of France and Germany combined.

DUBAI, April 26 (Reuters) – Pakistan has indefinitely delayed an auction to sell third-generation (3G) mobile telecoms licences, two operators told Reuters, which if completed would have raised a minimum of $630 million for the cash-strapped country.

The auction of three 3G licences had been scheduled to be held on March 29, according to a January government memorandum, and would be open to the five existing mobile operators plus potential new entrants.

Potential bidders were due to submit expressions of interest from January 21, but they have yet not been invited to do so, Walid Irshaid, chief executive of Pakistan Telecommunication Co (PTCL), told Reuters.

“All the dates announced earlier have been put on hold, what the new date is we don’t know,” said Irshaid. “The first step was not even taken yet. No official notification has been received by us or any other operator.”

Former monopoly PTCL, an affiliate of United Arab Emirates’ Etisalat, is the third-ranked mobile operator, with a 19 percent market share, behind Norway’s Telenor and Mobilink, a unit of Egypt’s Orascom Telecom, which respectively claim 25 and 30 percent of Pakistan’s 116 million mobile subscribers.

A spokesman for Telenor said the government had postponed the auction until indefinitely until it hires an international consultant to supervise the process.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, which is running the auction, was not immediately available for comment.

DUBAI, April 23 (Reuters) – Etisalat, the Gulf Arab region’s No. 2 telecom operator, reported flat quarterly profit that beat estimates as rising international revenue offset declines at home.

Abu Dhabi-based Etisalat, which posted falling profit in seven of the previous eight quarters, made a first-quarter net profit of 1.81 billion dirhams ($493 million), compared with a forecast for 1.7 billion in a Reuters poll.

Etisalat, 60-percent owned by the government and which operates in 17 countries across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, said international revenue was 2.28 billion dirhams, up 21 percent.

An improved performance by Egyptian unit Etisalat Misr, which suffered during unrest last year that ended former president Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule, likely helped the operator which did not break down its earnings by country.

“That is a large part of Etisalat’s foreign operations,” said a regional telecoms analyst who asked not to be identified.

“The situation in Egypt has improved and so Etisalat Misr is picking up. If you look at the past four quarters, international operations have provided about a quarter of total revenue.”

The contribution of Etisalat’s foreign operations is likely to remain around that level in the near term, the analyst said, after the firm announced its withdrawal from India in the wake of a 2G licence scandal.