The story
Saudi Telecommunication Company (stc Group) was established as a Saudi joint-stock company on 21 April 1998 and began operations of telecommunications services throughout Saudi Arabia on 2 May 1998 as a wholly owned entity of the government of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Telecommunication Company was a result of a privatization in Royal Decree No. M/35 by spinning off telecommunications owned by the government ministry Directorate of Post, Telephone and Telegraph.
The group received commercial registration as a Saudi Joint Stock Company on 29 June 1998 under registration No. 1010150269, and closed its initial public offering (IPO) in January 2003. On 11 April 2006, stc approved the increase of share capital from SR $15,000 million to SR $20,000 million through a transfer from the retained earnings to the capital.
The Saudi Digital Payments Company (stc bank) launched in 2017, with official work beginning in 2018.
In December 2019, the company launched a new identity, and the names of its branches in Bahrain and Kuwait were changed from VIVA to stc Kuwait and stc Bahrain. In June 2021, the Central Bank of Saudi Arabia approved the conversion of the Saudi Digital Payments Company (stc Pay) into a digital bank. The company replaced all its 3G networks with 5G in October 2021.
In 2021, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) sold 120 million shares in Saudi Telecom Company (stc Group) for $3.2 billion after completing a secondary share offering of stc Group.
In February 2022, it was announced that stc subsidiary, TAWAL, has acquired the Pakistani company, AWAL Telecom Private Limited - an independent passive telecommunications tower provider, for an undisclosed sum. AWAL was rebranded as TAWAL Pakistan.
In collaboration with Alibaba Group, the Alibaba Cloud was launched in May 2022. Center3, a new digital infrastructure assets company owned by stc Group, was launched in October 2022. The company also completed the first global 1.2T/channel trial in its DWDM optical network.
In February 2023, GO Telecom partnered with the company to provide IoT services throughout stc Group’s network. Microsoft and stc also expanded their partnership that same month to further advance digitalization across Saudi Arabia. It was announced in March 2023 that stc Group would provide the digital infrastructure for the Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, making it the company’s third consecutive year of partnership. Saudi Telecommunication Company's subsidiary TAWAL officially began operations in Europe in August of that year.
Read the full text
In September 2023, it was announced stc Group had acquired a 9.9% stake in the Madrid-headquartered multinational telecommunications company, Telefónica, S.A.. The deal was worth €2.1 billion - making stc Group the company’s largest shareholder.
From Wikipedia’s article on Stc Group, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5