Seven years into reporting our sustainability journey, we are proud to be presenting our first integrated Annual and Sustainability Report for 2018-19, Profit with Purpose, which captures our philosophy that a sustainable vision and practice is intrinsically linked with business success.
Our raison d’être
The economic headwinds a number of our businesses encountered throughout 2018 helped to crystalise our raison d’être even further: we at Crescent Enterprises are dedicated to supporting the purpose-driven economy by pursuing profit that contributes to humanity’s progress.
We endorse inclusive value generation, enabling technology, and high-impact innovation. In so doing, we proudly support the development agendas of progressive governments of the Gulf region of the Middle East, where we are headquartered, as they increasingly prioritise entrepreneurship and youth engagement.
We recognise that in the fast-paced and increasingly complex business environment of the 21st century, delayed gratification is a path to business longevity. Adopting such a mindset has enabled us to better define goals within our four operating platforms, harness resilience across our operations, and further invest in our sustainability journey.
A balanced performance
We maintained our expansion strategy in 2018, entering new markets and countries while witnessing the balanced growth of our subsidiaries, affiliates, and investments around the world. We did so by embracing challenges, learning from them, and transforming them into opportunities across our four platforms.
Under our operating businesses platform CE-Operates, Gulftainer—currently the world’s largest privately held ports and logistics company—secured a landmark 50-year concession to operate and develop the Port of Wilmington in Delaware, US, and build a new 1.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) container facility in Edgemoor.
This not only represents the largest operating investment by a private UAE company in the US, but also offers exciting avenues for growth for Gulftainer, which grappled with overcapacity, unhealthy competition, and shipping line consolidation in some of its other key markets.
Our investments held by CE-Invests also made steady progress in 2018: global business aviation services provider Gama Aviation Plc delivered strong organic growth in the US market– offsetting a weaker performance in its more challenging European markets– while many of our private equity fund investments witnessed strategic expansion within their key portfolio companies. Some of these funds expect to undertake strategic exits in 2019.
Our corporate venture capital (VC) platform CE-Ventures has to date invested over $85 million of the $150 million it pledged to invest in technology start-ups and VC funds by 2020. In 2018, the platform made ten such investments across the MENA region, the US, Southeast Asia, and India. The startups we invested in are spearheading artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and consumer and supply chain tech. In 2018, CE-Ventures portfolio grew revenues by 98% and seven out of the 15 portfolio companies raised $100 million in follow-on funding at an average 2x multiple of invested capital (MOIC) over their last round of funding.
In June 2018, our internal business incubation platform CE-Creates launched another new business, ION, in joint venture with renowned environmental management company Bee’ah, as a sustainable commercial transport company. ION’s mission is to introduce efficient transportation options to the populous cities of the Middle East in line with global efforts to limit global warming.
Honouring our commitments
Sustainability remained an intrinsic aspect of our business strategy in 2018 as we reaffirmed the sustainability goals of each of our four platforms and our overarching mission to help us better assess the socioeconomic impact of all our business activities.
We also continued to invest heavily in our people and communities, from which we draw our strengths, and sought to protect our natural environment. Internally and through our global partnerships, we continue to promote youth engagement, regional culture, and enabling innovation in addition to environmental conservation. Collectively, our corporate citizenship activities reached 34,776 individual community members in 2018.
To further extend our expertise and resources to the causes we support, we successfully launched an Employee Volunteer Programme across our headquarters, where employees spend a minimum of two work days per year volunteering with accredited organisations across the UAE.
I thank you, for your continued encouragement throughout our journey of purposeful progress, and look forward to realising further milestones together in the years to come.
