Abu Dhabi-based leading food and beverage company Agthia is joining the Morgan Stanley Capital International’s (MSCI) Small Cap Emerging Markets index from May 27, the company announced it in a short bourse filing on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange.
The index includes small-cap companies across 27 emerging markets countries. With 1,680 constituents, it covers nearly 14 percent of the free float-adjusted market capitalization in each country.
The small-cap segment of the MSCI indexes tends to attract more local economic and sector characteristics relative to larger emerging markets capitalization segments.
Agthia employs more than 4,000 people and owns the Al Ain water, Grand Mills bakery and the Agrivita animal feed brands, among others, further the company plans to add other brands to expand its portfolio. Last month, Agthia announced a five-year strategy to become the biggest food and beverage company in the region by 2025.
The food and beverage company’s inclusion comes after ADNOC Distribution said this month it is joining the MSCI Emerging Markets index on May 27. The fuel retailer will be one among the nine other UAE-listed companies including some of the biggest banks and property developers that are part of an index tracked by funds with billions of dollars worth of assets.
ADNOC Distribution’s inclusion is expected to increase the attractiveness of its shares to potential international investors and help to further diversify the company’s investor base, the company said in a statement.
The move has made ADNOC Distribution “eligible to the investable universe with an estimated weight of 0.04 percent (in the index), which would generate inflows of around $244 million on May 27, which is the trading day for index changes implementation,” Ahmed El Difrawy, managing director, head of data and index research at EFG Hermes Holding, said.
