Dubizzle Group eyes Saudi expansion as UAE business hits 46% profit margin, says CEO

Dubai: Dubizzle Group’s freshly minted IPO isn’t just about going public—it is funding an aggressive push into Saudi Arabia, whilst its UAE business generates exceptional profit at nearly 50 per cent profit margins.

CEO Imran Ali Khan revealed to Gulf News today that the classified ads giant is channelling its IPO proceeds into Saudi expansion, where the company has already secured “early leadership” after launching just 18 months ago.

"We started investing about a year and a half ago, and that business has grown fantastically,” explained a jubilant Khan, fresh off the early morning IPO announcement.

“We have millions of monthly web sessions on the platform, millions of users, and we have thousands of agencies using the platform,” he added.

Dubizzle Group announced early Monday morning that it plans to sell a 30.34 percent stake through an initial public offering on the Dubai Financial Market (DFM), marking one of the largest tech listings in the UAE this year.

UAE business generates cash for Saudi bet

The numbers behind Dubizzle's expansion strategy are striking. The UAE business—which accounts for 89 per cent of group revenues—delivered $105 million in adjusted revenue in the first half of 2025, with adjusted EBITDA margins jumping from 31 per cent to 46 per cent year-on-year.

"Growth now trickles down into solid EBITDA," Khan explained. "Being an asset-light company, we have 85 per cent cash flow conversion.

The UAE business is highly cash positive, generating cash that more than covers the investment in Saudi Arabia, because at the group level, we also have cash flow."

Saudi Arabia is the key investment market, but then the UAE is highly cash positive. Saudi should break even and be cash flow positive in the medium term, and the business has been growing a lot as well,” Khan explained.

The group posted 39 per cent revenue growth in H1 2024 compared to the same period last year, cementing its position as one of the fastest-growing classifieds companies globally. He said Dubizzle is a “fast-growing tech business in a very, very solid industry classified as being one of the most favoured tech sectors globally and in the UAE.”

M&A strategy

Khan confirmed that acquisition opportunities remain central to Dubizzle's growth playbook, though the company is staying laser-focused on its core markets.

"We're looking around the value chain of the classifieds piece," he said, pointing to previous strategic acquisitions like Property Monitor, the leading data provider for agencies and developers, and Drivearabia, a platform for new car editorial content.

"We have a pretty strong balance sheet when it comes to cash position today," Khan noted. "There will be a primary component [in the IPO] to capitalise on any growth opportunities we see from an M&A point of view."

The CEO ruled out geographic expansion beyond the UAE and Saudi Arabia, stating firmly: "We're not looking at expanding our footprint in new geographies or investing in very early-stage businesses in new geographies."

What about AI?

As for AI — the tech world's biggest buzzword since the invention of the internet — Dubizzle has been quietly building artificial intelligence capabilities since 2016, long before the current AI boom, and now operates more than 60 proprietary AI models making half a million predictions per minute.

"We started our AI Lab back in 2016, well before AI became a popular term globally," Khan exlained. "Globally, even at a global scale, we present this at conferences, and I'm proud to say we are thought leaders globally in the classifieds space."

The company employs over 600 engineers across three tech centres, all trained in AI, working on a single tech stack that powers 15 out of 16 consumer platform implementations.