Client Name

Akseer Research

Faculty Advisor

Dr. Mohsin Ali Patel

SBS Thought Leadership Areas

Investment Decision Making

SBS Thought Leadership Area Justification

This is a project which falls squarely into the category of Investment Decision Making, as the whole project consists of an investment appraisal project; the construction of a framework that is intended to aid decision regarding the purchase, holding or sale of security. Each part of the deliverable—the driver-based forecast, FCFF/FCFE discounted cash-flow (DCF) valuation, cost-of-capital calculation, peer benchmarking of trading multiples, and the Overweight/Neutral rating—is a tool for the investment decision-making process.

Aligned SDGs

GOAL 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

Aligned SDGs Justification

The project also has a linkage with SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth). The sector is a very important and a growing employer with the four companies combined employing tens of thousands of teachers, administration and services staff and the human capital development that can be provided is a precondition for the diversified and knowledge-based economy that Vision 2030 is aiming to establish. It contributes to the overall goal of sustained and inclusive economic growth by helping to direct investments to an industry that creates human capital and employment opportunities for the skilled.

NDA

No

Abstract

This Experiential Learning Project is an account of the five-month (February to June 2026) project experience of a four-member team from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi with Akseer Research, an institutional equity-research and advisory firm. The goal of the engagement was to establish a sector-specific valuation and benchmarking framework for the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul) listed companies in the educational-services sector and to apply the framework to generate institutional quality initiation-of-coverage reports for four Tadawul-listed educational-services companies – the National Company for Learning and Education (NCLE), Ataa Educational Company, Al Khaleej Training and Education Company, and Almasar Alshamil Education Company.

The work was done in three phases, namely diagnosis, design and analysis, and implementation. Five-year historical financial data and an additional five-year explicit forecast were compiled for each company based on information from the Tadawul disclosures, audited financial statements, board of directors’ reports, and presentations to investors. A standardised three-statement model was built from the bottom up for each name, based on enrolment, capacity utilisation and fee per student assumptions, and each company was valued intrinsically using two DCF approaches: free cash flow to the firm (FCFF) and free cash flow to equity (FCFE), with the FCFF valuation used as the basis for all recommendations and trading multiples compared across the sector for context.

The key takeaways are that the education sector in the GCC is driven by strong structural demand (a young and growing population, high penetration of private schools and kindergartens, and the human capital agenda of Saudi Vision 2030), and that structural quality, growth, margin and leverage differs significantly across the four companies, which results in materially different valuation conclusions when applied to each company in the same manner. The Overweight rating is assigned to Ataa Educational and Almasar Alshamil stocks, both of which are trading below their fair values, while NCLE and Al Khaleej stocks are rated Neutral due to the already embedded strong fundamentals or diverse model. The report finds a disciplined, standardised and scalable framework materially enhances comparability and research consistency across the sector, and outlines recommendations for how to expand the framework to the rest of the listed education universe.

Document Type

Restricted Access

Document Name for Citation

Experiential Learning Project

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