Noon close to profitability, mulls dual listing in KSA, UAE

Mohamed Alabbar, Chairman of Noon, said the company is very close to achieving profitability and plans a dual listing in Saudi Arabia and the UAE within two years.

He added that the company is working on self-delivery services to cut costs, with plans to lease robots instead of purchasing them, the Financial Times reported.

The Chairman pointed to the company's plans to halve the workforce — currently around 40,000 employees — by 2027, relying on self-driving technologies and other automation that can operate around the clock, seven days a week.

Noon's numbers and business volumes are improving, and its technology has become much better, Alabbar said.

According to Noon’s data on Argaam, the e-commerce company, a 50%-owned subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), was launched in November 2016, with an initial investment of $1 billion.