The third quarter extended that improvement.
SABIC reported a net adjusted income of SAR 698 million in Q3 2025, recording an increase of 45% compared to the previous quarter's net adjusted income of SAR 484 million.
The arc from a loss in January to a SAR 698 million quarterly profit by November is not a dramatic recovery. It is a slow, methodical grind upward driven by cost management and volume discipline rather than any meaningful improvement in the underlying price environment for petrochemical products. Investors in Saudi petrochemical stocks on Tadawul in 2025 needed patience, not momentum.
The contrast with Ma'aden is striking precisely because the physical drivers are so different. Where SABIC is fighting a global supply glut, Ma'aden is operating in commodity markets where the supply side is structurally constrained and the demand narrative, particularly for phosphate fertilizers and gold, is supported by actual order flows rather than projections.
In 2025, Ma'aden's revenue reached SAR 38.58 billion, an increase of 18.53% compared to the previous year, while earnings grew by 155.89%.
That earnings growth rate is not a rounding error. It reflects operating leverage in a mining business where fixed costs are largely sunk and incremental revenue at higher commodity prices flows rapidly to the bottom line.
The quarterly data reinforces this.
In the third quarter of 2025, Ma'aden posted EPS of SAR 0.57, up from SAR 0.26 in the same period of 2024, on revenue of SAR 10.0 billion, up 24% year on year, with net income of SAR 2.21 billion and a profit margin of 22%, compared to 12% in Q3 2024.
The margin expansion is the critical data point. A doubling of the profit margin in a single year does not happen through cost cutting alone. It happens when the price of what you sell rises faster than the cost of extracting it, which is precisely what occurred across Ma'aden's phosphate and gold segments in 2025.
The corporate structure is also changing in ways that matter for how investors should think about the Ma'aden mining stock and its long-term earnings profile.
Ma'aden completed the acquisition of the remaining 25.10% stake in Ma'aden Bauxite and Alumina Company and Ma'aden Aluminium Company from Alcoa Corporation on July 1, 2025.
That transaction consolidates full ownership of the aluminum value chain, removing the profit-sharing arrangement with Alcoa and allowing Ma'aden to capture a larger share of the economics from its own smelting operations. It is a structurally significant move, not a financial engineering exercise, because it changes the unit economics of every tonne of aluminum that flows through the Ras Al Khair complex.
Beyond the aluminum consolidation, Ma'aden is extending its footprint into minerals that sit at the intersection of Saudi Arabia Vision 2030 mining ambitions and the global energy transition supply chain.
Ma'aden has signed a memorandum of understanding with MP Materials to develop an integrated rare earth supply chain in Saudi Arabia,
a move that positions the company in a segment where China currently controls the overwhelming majority of global processing capacity. The kingdom's geological endowment in rare earths is not yet fully mapped, but the intent is clear: to use the mining sector as a vehicle for industrial diversification that goes beyond the phosphate and aluminum businesses that have defined Ma'aden's first two decades.
The divergence between SABIC and Ma'aden on Tadawul in 2025 is ultimately a story about where the physical supply chain bottlenecks sit. In petrochemicals, the bottleneck is demand absorption in a world of excess capacity, and no amount of operational efficiency fully resolves that. In mining, the bottleneck is the ore body itself, and Saudi Arabia is only beginning to understand what it holds beneath the Arabian Shield. That asymmetry, more than any quarterly earnings figure, is what serious analysts of the GCC materials sector should be tracking.
For informational and research purposes only. Not a solicitation. Consult a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decision.
