French engineering consultancy Egis expects double-digit growth in Saudi Arabia in 2026 despite a drop in new construction contracts.
CEO Laurent Germain told AGBI the company’s Saudi operations would earn net revenues of €300 million ($348 million) next year.
“I expect to have more contracts in work supervision in the next few years,” he said. “Because a lot of projects that were in the design phase in the last few years will go to construction, and so there will be more work in construction supervision.”
Saudi Arabia is the company’s third-largest market, Laurent said, behind its home country and the US. While its Saudi revenue grew this year by 10 percent compared with last, Germain said that the amount of new orders increased by 20 percent. He expects this growth to continue.
Egis is overseeing work in major Saudi giga-projects including Diriyah, Qiddiya and AlUla. It has supervised construction on the Riyadh Metro and is overseeing work on the monorail in Riyadh’s King Abdullah Financial District.
It is also bidding to manage Line 7, a 65km metro line designed to connect the King Khalid Airport in the north to Qiddiya in the south.
Across the country, however, this year there has been a drop in the number of new construction projects amid cuts by the Public Investment Fund and attempts by the government to rein in spending.
In the first five months of this year, data released by the Saudi Contractors Authority showed that the number of new contracts issued fell by 77 percent compared with the previous year.
Germain said Egis has not been affected by the cuts: “There may have been some cuts here and there because of course they have launched a lot of projects.
“At some point, you need to define the priorities according to the projects we have.”
Egis is considering expansion in aviation, water and transmission and distribution of energy, he said.
The company’s presence in Saudi Arabia has ballooned from 200 members of staff in 2020 to 1,500.
“I’m very happy that the investments that we made in 2020 in Saudi Arabia are paying off today,” Germain said.


