Source FY2025 audited financial statements, restated in the modelWorkings data appendixUpdated 24 September 2026
The read
The incumbent's case is scale, and the accounts make it. SAR 77.8B of revenue is 71.8% of the industry and more than three times the next operator. On that base it earns 16.2% on invested capital that costs it 9.3%, a spread of +6.9pt, and it has cleared that hurdle in all 8 years covered here. Neither of the others has done that.
The tension is not in the operations, it is in the distribution. Dividends declared in FY2025 came to 138.0% of net profit. A payout above earnings is being funded from somewhere other than the year's profit, and on a balance sheet this capital-intensive that means either the cash reserve, borrowing, or network spending deferred into a later year. Free cash flow of SAR 6.5B covers a good deal of it, but the policy only holds while that continues.
Gross margin of 48.7% is the lowest of the three, which is what a mass consumer base and handset sales do to a blended margin. It matters less than it appears: scale converts a thinner margin into the largest absolute profit in the industry, and the balance sheet is by some distance the safest, at 0.18x debt to equity against an industry median of 0.28x and interest covered 22.9x over.
The bet it made
stc bought both. It has 63% 5G population coverage and is the only operator holding enough low-band and enough mid-band not to have to choose between reach and throughput. Where the other two picked a side because their budgets forced one, stc bet on scale and bought the physics for both games.
That position is still being extended rather than defended. The Saudi Vision Cable, continued 5G capacity investment and a growing data-center estate all point the same way, and in late 2025 it signed an MoU with HUMAIN to build AI data centers in the Kingdom. It no longer consolidates its towers.
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| stc | 18.8% | 20.9% | 18.4% | 13.0% | 11.8% | 13.6% | 15.7% | 15.2% |
| Mobily | 15.1% | 15.6% | 24.5% | 15.0% | 15.5% | 12.1% | 14.7% | 16.4% |
| Zain KSA | 20.2% | 24.3% | 23.1% | 13.8% | 14.8% | 15.4% | 6.8% | 4.5% |
Where the money comes from
Retail
stc leads because it never had to win. It was the monopoly, and it still holds the customers worth holding: the postpaid lines and the family accounts. It earns the most per subscriber of the three. Retail grew 3.4%, and almost all of that came from selling more to the same people rather than from finding new ones.
Enterprise
This is where stc's dominance is most complete and most exposed. It is the Kingdom-linked incumbent with nationwide fibre, its own data centers and thirty years of government relationships, and it earns roughly three times what Mobily does here. But the line grew 0.4% in 2025, and the split explains it: public sector revenue fell 3.4% while private sector rose 6.6%. When your biggest advantage is concentration in one buyer, you inherit that buyer's budget cycle.
Wholesale
stc is becoming the domestic landlord. It still owns more infrastructure than anyone, so everyone else's traffic runs over it. Internationally the picture inverts: transit is a commodity, prices fall, and the gateway position it once held is being dismantled by the other two.
What it does with the money
On reinvestment, stc is committing the most and controlling the least: the HUMAIN joint venture puts capital into data-center capacity it does not wholly own. On the roads, it is choosing to defend the domestic position where it is strongest while its international business shrinks.
What comes back to shareholders
Of what it earned in FY2025, stc declared SAR 4.20 a share, 138.0% of net profit, against free cash flow of SAR 6.5B. Every riyal a telecom earns arrives at the same fork: back into the network, or out to shareholders. That ratio is the answer this one gave.
In context
This company only means something next to the other two and against the economics of the industry they share.
Read the industry piece See it against the others