Dear Shareholders
2019 has been a significant year for RAK Ceramics, as we celebrate 30 years of ceramic excellence. We have worked hard to establish firm foundations and have focused on building a robust infrastructure; we have created many innovative products and have implemented processes that would enable future growth. Combined with visionary leadership, passion and a strong infrastructure we have been able to grow our global distribution network, and establish ourselves as one of the world’s largest ceramics manufacturers – an achievement of which we can be proud. As we enter 2020, our business is now well established, but we will not rest. We will continue to strengthen our position as world leaders in the field of global ceramics, focusing on innovation and delivering on our vision to become the world’s leading ceramics lifestyle solutions provider.
We are proud to be a global brand, but we are honoured to be one of the best home-grown brands’ in the UAE.
KHALID BIN SAUD AL QASIMI
Chairman of the board
Dear Shareholders
We began 2019 with a sense of cautious optimism and a strong commitment to supporting our growth markets and balancing increases in costs. We have focused on streamlining our operations and have continued to optimise our production capabilities through the implementation of an efficiency program across all manufacturing units. As a result, we demonstrated strong resilience in 2019, and our business was able to deliver record gross profit margins and a healthy net profit despite challenging regional market conditions. Improvements in the consumption of energy and raw material enabled our UAE and Bangladesh operations to outperform their respective markets, while our tableware and faucets businesses also performed well. We have seen an increase in revenue in Saudi Arabia, supported by growth in our wholesale business, and we remain optimistic for further growth in Saudi Arabia. In India, we increased the production and export of slabs, which has strengthened our brand and position in the market. We look forward to leverage this further and to establish India as a turnaround market in the future. Looking ahead for 2020, we will remain focused on enhancing our brand value by increasing our retail footprint and opening new showrooms in key markets. We will build an effective supply chain and identify opportunistic acquisitions while maintaining revenue in our growth markets.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our Board of Directors for their unwavering support, and our management team and employees for their hard work and dedication.
ABDALLAH MASSAAD
Group CEO