Chapter 1

Scale and Book Value

Ghitha Holding is an Abu Dhabi food-and-agriculture holding company assembled by acquisition inside the IHC / Royal Group orbit, renamed from Zee Store in 2022 and now controlled by Two Point Zero Group. FY2025 revenue reached AED 5.58bn, roughly nineteen times its 2020 level, yet the shares trade near half of the AED 5.45bn equity attributable to owners. Most of that book is not the food business; it is a marked-to-market stake in a listed affiliate.

What the company is

Ghitha Holding P.J.S.C is a private joint-stock company incorporated in Abu Dhabi, with ordinary shares listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange [1]. It began life as Zee Store PJSC, a food retail-and-wholesale business, and adopted the Ghitha name in 2022 [2]. It reached the market by direct listing on the ADX Second Market in December 2020 rather than through a public offering, and has since grown into a vertically integrated portfolio spanning dairy, poultry, aquaculture, fresh produce, edible oils, and food trading — including Al Ain Farms, Marmum Dairy, Al Jazira Poultry, Asmak, NRTC and Zee Stores [3].

Control has always sat with the Abu Dhabi conglomerate ecosystem. At the 2020 listing, International Holding Company (IHC) was the parent and Royal Group Holding the ultimate parent [4]. During 2025 that changed hands within the same group: IHC Food Holding transferred its entire shareholding to Two Point Zero Group (formerly Multiply Group), which became the parent effective 30 November 2025 [5]. Ghitha is a controlled subsidiary throughout; the public float trades alongside a parent that directs the portfolio. There is no sell-side analyst coverage and the company holds no earnings calls.

How big, and how fast it got there

The scale is recent and acquisition-driven. Revenue ran at roughly AED 0.3bn in 2019–2020 as a single-line consumer-goods trader; it then multiplied as the group consolidated acquired food and agriculture businesses.

Sources: FY2020 revenue AED 289.0m and FY2019 AED 303.0m [6]; FY2021 AED 545.6m and FY2022 AED 2,278.6m [7]; FY2023 AED 4,566.9m [8]; FY2024 AED 4,915.9m and FY2025 AED 5,580.2m [9].

The business is a food group first. FY2025 revenue splits across five reported segments, and the profit is far more concentrated than the sales: dairy and protein produced 42% of revenue but 61% of gross profit, at a 31% gross margin, while the low-margin trading, produce and edible-oil lines carry the volume [10].

Source: FY2025 Annual Report, Segment Reporting — segment revenue and gross profit [11]; segment definitions [12].

Food distribution is a thin-margin trade, and Ghitha is no exception. Group gross margin was 21.5% in FY2025 and operating margin 5.7%; after non-controlling interests, finance costs and loss-making disposals, the profit attributable to owners was AED 36.5m — a 0.7% net margin on AED 5.58bn of sales [13].

Source: derived from FY2025 Annual Report, Consolidated Statement of Profit or Loss — revenue AED 5,580.2m, operating profit AED 318.7m, profit to owners AED 36.5m of AED 89.9m group profit [14].

The reported profit does not mean what it looks like

Headline earnings are the least reliable number in this company. Profit attributable to owners was AED 30.3m in FY2023, then AED 2,556.1m in FY2024, then AED 36.5m in FY2025 [15] [16]. The FY2024 figure is not operating income.

Sources: FY2021 AED 57.6m and FY2022 AED 281.7m [17]; FY2023 AED 30.3m [18]; FY2024 AED 2,556.1m and FY2025 AED 36.5m [19].

The FY2024 spike came from a single accounting event. In January 2024 the group sold a 3% stake in a listed associate, Apex Investment PSC, for AED 213.2m cash, lost control, and remeasured its retained 48.5% holding to Apex's quoted market price of AED 3,446.9m. That step produced a gain on derecognition of AED 2,654.7m — essentially all of FY2024's reported profit, and almost none of it cash [20]. Strip the one-off out and the cleaner read is operating profit, which rose from AED 254.4m in FY2023 [21] to AED 318.7m in FY2025 as gross margin widened toward the higher-margin dairy mix [22]. The underlying operating trajectory is up; the earnings line is noise until the one-offs are removed.

The book, the price, and where value actually sits

This is where a cold reader should slow down. At AED 11.30 per share and 241.6m shares, Ghitha's market capitalisation is roughly AED 2.73bn — about half the AED 5.45bn of equity attributable to owners [23]. A holding company trading at half of book is exactly the kind of asset the report needs to test rather than celebrate, because the composition of that book decides whether the discount is opportunity or warning.

Source: equity attributable to owners AED 5,454.4m and investment in associates AED 4,141.6m per FY2025 Annual Report, Statement of Financial Position [24]; market capitalisation derived from the ADX closing price of AED 11.30 (31 July 2026) and 241.6m shares outstanding.

Three-quarters of the owners' book is not the food group. Investment in associates stood at AED 4,141.6m at end-2025 — 76% of the AED 5.45bn equity attributable to owners — dominated by the same Apex stake, carried by the equity method after the 2024 remeasurement [25]. The operating food-and-agriculture businesses — property, plant and equipment of AED 2,159.5m, goodwill and intangibles of AED 611.4m, biological assets, inventory and receivables, against AED 1,146.8m of bank borrowings — net to a far smaller slice of the owners' equity [26] [27].

Source: derived from FY2025 Annual Report, Statement of Financial Position — associates AED 4,141.6m; balance to reconcile with equity to owners of AED 5,454.4m [28].

That composition cuts both ways, which is the point. The associate is a listed security with an observable price, so a large part of the stated net worth is at least marked to a real market rather than to management's estimate — a point in favour of the discount being genuine. Against it: a minority Ghitha shareholder holds an indirect, minority interest in that affiliate through a parent-controlled holding, the equity-method income it throws off is modest (AED 49.3m in FY2025, larger than the whole group's profit to owners), and the food businesses beneath it convert little of their revenue into owner earnings [29]. What would settle the question is evidence on two fronts: whether the associate and goodwill carrying values hold up on scrutiny, and whether a controlled structure lets that value reach the public shareholder at all.

The through-line

That is the spine this report is built on: is Ghitha's discount to book a genuine margin of safety, or a fair price for a parent-assembled holding whose stated net worth is mostly a marked-to-market stake in a listed affiliate, and whose operating profits reach minority owners only after non-controlling interests, finance costs and loss-making disposals take their share? Everything that follows — the year-by-year financials and the absence of any forward estimates, the quality of the associate and acquisition accounting, the control and related-party structure, the operating economics of the food segments, and the valuation math — is an attempt to answer it on the evidence.