Six UAE-Listed Companies Turn to Share Buybacks After War-Driven Sell-Off

Five of them trade in Abu Dhabi: the conglomerate International Holding Company (IHC), its subsidiary Alpha Dhabi, satellite and geospatial AI company Space42, petrochemicals producer Borouge and investment manager Waha Capital. Three are majority-owned by the Abu Dhabi government, which holds minority stakes in the other two. The sixth is Dubai-listed food delivery company Talabat, a subsidiary of Germany's Delivery Hero.

The moves follow a sharp derating of UAE equities. The Dubai and Abu Dhabi indexes fell 11% and 9% respectively between the start of the Iran war on February 28 and November 2, and the combined price-to-earnings ratio of the two exchanges dropped to 11 times from 15 times over the same period, according to AGBI.

"Buybacks support the messaging that the UAE is open for business, corporate balance sheets are quite strong and companies will be supportive of their own share price," Salah Shamma, head of Mena equities investment at Franklin Templeton in Dubai, told AGBI. "But at the same time, we're operating in a very difficult environment with a geopolitical backdrop that is destabilising and creating uncertainty."

The programmes vary in size. Waha Capital and Alpha Dhabi can each repurchase up to 10% of their shares, Talabat 5%, and Space42 and Borouge up to 2.5% each. IHC, the UAE's most valuable listed company with a market capitalisation of AED746 billion, is running a second AED5 billion ($1.36 billion) buyback after completing a first programme of the same size in December 2025.

Results so far have been mixed. Between their buyback announcements and November 2, Space42 shares gained 46%, though they remained 17% below the listing price. The other Abu Dhabi companies, apart from Waha Capital, fell over the period. Borouge was down 11% since its buyback approval and traded 7% below its IPO price. Talabat rose 47%, narrowing its decline from its 2024 IPO price to 29%.

Repurchased shares are either cancelled or held in treasury for possible resale, which cuts the share count used to calculate earnings per share and can lift that figure without any growth in profit. Shamma said buybacks can also reduce trading liquidity and, where free floats are small, potentially lower a stock's weighting in indexes.

Dipanjan Ray, head of equities at Wealthbrix Capital Partners in Dubai, said buybacks remain rare in the region because companies still have plenty of room to grow. "Companies prefer to expand earnings per share in an organic way rather than through financial engineering," he said. He added that US tax rules favour buybacks over dividends, whereas the UAE's tax treatment of dividends is favourable, and that "there's also a cultural preference for cash dividends."

Ray said the programmes are unlikely to move UAE markets materially because they are isolated rather than the multi-year repurchase plans common in the US. Even so, he expects the trend to continue. "I expect more buybacks," he said. "Most likely, these will be by companies with large reserves versus their equity base or market cap."