Source FY2025 audited financial statements, restated in the modelWorkings data appendixUpdated 24 September 2026
The read
The scale case is easy to make and easy to misread. SAR 1.1B of revenue is 29.8% of the cohort, on the largest milling capacity in the sector and the most wheat put through it, and the company turns that into 15.1% on invested capital that costs it 9.2%, a spread of +5.9pt. Set beside three peers running near-identical plants, that is the second-narrowest spread here.
The reason is not in the mill. Of SAR 2.3B of invested capital, SAR 1.1B is the premium its buyer paid at privatization, carried as goodwill and acquired intangibles, a figure that happens to be worth about a full year of this company's revenue. It mills nothing and earns nothing. It is the price of the company, sitting in the denominator of its return. Measured on operating capital alone the same business earns 29.6%, the highest of the four.
Everything else reads like the sector leader you would expect. Capacity utilization of 94.0%, and revenue growth of +9.3%, the fastest in the cohort. Margins mid-pack at 46.9% gross and 35.1% EBITDA, interest covered 4.9x over on debt to equity of 1.15x, and a distribution of 55.3% of net profit against free cash flow of SAR 260M.
The bet it made
First Mills bought scale and paid for it. It runs the widest plant in the sector and the only durum line in it, and in 2025 it put its expansion into feed and storage rather than into more wheat capacity. That is a quiet bet on the half of the ton the state does not price.
The company was acquired with debt and a purchase premium, and in 2022 that premium landed on the balance sheet: goodwill and acquired intangibles of roughly 1.1 billion riyals, appearing in a single year and more than doubling invested capital. Reported return on capital halved that year while the mills carried on doing exactly what they had done before.
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Mills | 1.1% | 7.6% | 4.9% | 4.8% | 4.2% | 12.4% | 5.5% | 7.4% |
| Modern Mills | 2.2% | 3.0% | 4.7% | 3.3% | 3.5% | 6.0% | 10.6% | 13.3% |
| Arabian Mills | n/a | n/a | 7.7% | 14.5% | 8.1% | 2.3% | 1.9% | 5.8% |
| Fourth Mills | n/a | n/a | 7.5% | 6.2% | 12.8% | 1.8% | 2.5% | 5.4% |
Where the volume comes from
Regulated flour
The core, and the part nobody competes on price for. 1.62 million tons of wheat milled in 2025, the most in the cohort, at 94% capacity utilization. Growth here is allocation and utilization, not share taken from a rival.
Bran and feed
1,350 tons a day of feed capacity, raised by half during 2025, and 1,238 tons a day of bran. This is the part of the ton policy does not price, and the only part of the core business where the company can beat or be beaten.
Beyond the allocation
Durum is the differentiator, and no other company in the cohort discloses a durum line. The fifth factory and four extra mills added in 2025 are the largest capacity step any of the four has taken since privatization.
What it does with the money
The capital story is the deleveraging. Borrowings have come down every year since the acquisition, and the payout has settled at around half of earnings against comfortable free cash flow.
What has not moved is the premium. It is not amortized away, it does not shrink as the debt does, and it will sit in the denominator of this company's return on capital until either an impairment or a great deal more profit shifts it.
What comes back to shareholders
Of what it earned in FY2025, First Mills declared SAR 2.79 a share, 55.3% of net profit, against free cash flow of SAR 260M. Every riyal a miller earns arrives at the same fork: back into the plant, or out to shareholders. That ratio is the answer this one gave.
In context
This company only means something next to the other three and against the economics of the industry they share.
Read the industry piece See it against the others