How TIME and Statista Determined Arabia's Growth Leaders of 2026

TIME has published its inaugural list of the Arabia's Growth Leaders, in partnership with Statista, a leading international provider of market and consumer data and rankings. The result of this quantitative study: 250 companies shaping the modern Gulf. Here's how the winners were selected.

Methodology

The ranking "Arabia's Growth Leaders of 2026" is the result of a comprehensive analysis conducted to identify the top performing publicly listed companies in the GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates). The analysis is based on three primary dimensions:

• Growth Performance

• Financial Stability

• Stock Performance

The first dimension, Growth Performance, was assessed using data from Statista’s revenue database, which contains company growth data for the last five years. To be considered for the evaluation the companies had to be headquartered in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, publicly traded and demonstrate strong revenue growth in the last five years. Relative growth and the number of years in which growth was achieved, were considered in the evaluation.

The second dimension, Financial Stability, was investigated by analyzing the companies’ profitability as well as using classic metrics such as the Piotroski F-Score and Altman Z-Score, which refer to a company’s overall financial health and the probability to file for bankruptcy. Industry specific KPIs were utilized to portray financial stability of companies within the banking, insurance and REIT sector.

The third dimension, Stock Performance, was evaluated based on multiple KPIs that underline the companies’ strengths as a stock investment. The analysis process focused on the average annual growth rate, recent returns, a comparison to the overall market and the stocks’ volatility for the past 5 years.

Once the data was collected and evaluated, it was consolidated and weighted within a scoring model. The scores of all three dimensions were added on an equal percentage basis to form the final ranking score of a maximum of 100 points. The 250 companies with the highest score were awarded as “Arabia's Growth Leaders of 2026” by TIME and Statista.