You Only Live Twice: Sherif Foda, CEO and Chairman, NESR The CEO and Chairman of Nasdaq-listed Middle East oil services company NESR wants to break regional business stereotypes, while making billions in the process.

Sherif Foda flies a million miles a year, "Like a pilot." He likes to push his limits, "Can I still do what I used to do when I was 30?" And he doesn't like to be sick: "I'd rather just drop dead."

It's no wonder the 55-year-old CEO and Chairman of the Middle East's largest oilfield services company, NESR, initially wanted a career in politics.

"My father was a vice minister, and my grandfather was a governor. The first thing I told them when I graduated school was, 'I'm going to be 007. I'm going to work in intelligence,'" he tells me.

And he certainly looks the part. You'll never see him unshaven, you'll rarely spot him in jeans, and you most certainly won't catch him missing his gym routine (or his regular weekend dinners at the Zuma's of the fine dining world – didn't 007 like to party, too?)

"My father's best friend, his colleague, was the minister. One day, he sat me down and told me going into intelligence would be the biggest mistake of my life," Foda says.

"He told me, you think intelligence is what you see on TV, with Roger Moore having all these nice girlfriends? No, habibi, you're going to be miserable. You won't be allowed to do anything. You've got this fantastic GPA. Why don't you go into engineering and have a life? Otherwise, you're going to be a soldier. You're not going to be Roger Moore."

That was the end of politics for him, and fortunately so - at least for the Middle East's energy sector.

Founded in 2017, NESR, which stands for National Energy Services Reunited, became the first energy company from the Middle East to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange. In just five months, Foda raised USD$230 million through a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company), and one year later, completed the company's formation by merging Gulf Energy and National Petroleum Services.

NESR attracted the backing of some of the Middle East's largest family offices – not an easy feat in the region - including business titans Lubna Al Olayan and Yousef Al Nuwais, as well as investors Fidelity, Encompass and Boston Partners, with the aim to bring together East and West wealth.

The company went from racking in $450 million in combined revenue to an incredible $1 billion. Today, it has over 6,000 employees in over 15 countries. But how did it all begin? Like with all things Foda-related, it's got an amusing backstory.

After serving 24 years at Franco-American oil services giant Schlumberger, Foda took just one hour to quit his big corporate job.

"I was at an energy conference, and I heard a gentleman say he had retired from his role as CEO to play golf and spend time with his family," he tells me. "It sounds like the dream, right? Except it wasn't, because he told me he'd gotten so bored as a retiree that he'd decided to do something even riskier: a SPAC on the New York Stock Exchange.

"I mean, this guy was 74 years old at the time, and he wanted to start a new life. I said, well I'm younger than this guy. Why can't I do that too?"

He did a little more than a SPAC. Not only did NESR report revenues of $1.1 billion for 2023, up 26% year on year, it also launched its own decarbonization initiative, NEDA, its Saudi R&D centre NORI, and acquired a minority stake in Dutch desalination technology company Salttech.

Moreover, NESR today remains one of the few Middle Eastern companies to be listed on the Nasdaq, joining the likes of Fadi Ghandour's logisitics company Aramex, the first Arab company to list in New York, as well as ride hailing unicorn SWVL (2021) and tech platform Anghami (2022). Yet being publicly traded, triumphant as it may be, didn't come with its own challenges. Last year, NESR was delisted from Nasdaq after an auditing oversight caused it to miss a filing deadline. Foda, himself a military man, doesn't shy away from admitting it was a mistake.

"We did everything by the book, like a Swiss watch. But we underestimated the knowledge of the existing finance team's understanding of US GAAP accounting, and unfortunately, we ended up having a restatement. What haunts you is something so small, not the bigger picture.

"The guys in accounting didn't accrue for some of the costs in two countries, and it caused us two years of suffering to do a restatement. Thankfully, our reputation was and still is very strong. We hired the toughest people in the world to investigate everything," he says.

Indeed, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the US government oversight agency responsible for regulating the securities markets, ruled out any foul play, and NESR relisted on the Nasdaq on November 20 in a fascinating rarity for the world of publicly listed companies.

It was a silver lining for Foda, whose tone throughout our conversation alludes to a self-assigned secret mission to break stereotypical impressions of Middle Eastern companies.

"When you tell people this company is from the Middle East and it's publicly listed, there's almost always a question mark on it. The problem we have in the Middle East is that we don't try to change the stereotype. We accept mediocrity," he says.

"It bothers me. It bothers me that we accept it instead of taking initiative to change it. Why can't a service company from the Middle East be good? Why is a local company flagged as lower quality? All these multinational companies, their entire workforce is from the Middle East.

"But we advertise poorly. We're not the best marketing people in the world. I always tell the guys, do not do a used car salesman's job. When the client calls me for a service that I know we're not good at, I tell the customer no, for this service, use the big boys to do it. We are not good in this particular service. But when it comes to fracking, for example, I tell our customers that we'll do an even better job. That's when you gain credibility and have customers who trust you," he says.

"Even though we're on the NASDAQ, I don't say we're an American company. I say, proudly, we're from the Middle East, listed in America. That's a statement I want to make," Foda says.

He works hard to do so as well, sometimes staying awake for 48 hours straight. In fact, the CEO recalls a time when he completed a roundtrip to New York and Saudi, twice, only to wake up on a business trip in Oman the next day at 4am to severe heart palpitations.

"I looked at my bed sheets and they were soaked. I had been sweating all night. I Googled my symptoms and it said I was likely going to have a heart attack.

"So I put on a t-shirt and shorts and went for a run on the beach. I said, if it's a heart attack, I'm going to die. If it's not, then it's just stress and anxiety from travel, and it'll go away.

"I wrote an email to my family and said, guys, if I don't make it, and you read this email, I'll be dead. But at least I'll have died on a beautiful beach in Oman," he tells me.

And I can't help but think that while he's neither in the intelligence nor in the movies, Sherif Foda has dedicated his life to his work. Perhaps that makes him the 007 the Middle Eastern energy world didn't know it needed.

'TREP TALK: Sherif Foda, CEO and Chairman, NESR, Advises Entrepreneurs

Oil prices
"There's a negative sentiment now and more oil in the market, so prices will drop until that excess gets absorbed, then they'll go back up, presumably in the second half of next year. But I still believe OPEC+ won't flood the market, so the oil price will not collapse to 50 as some predict. I think it's going to remain in this 60-70 range and then go back to the 70 to 80 range."

Opportunities
"Kuwait's leadership is now laser focused on making sure they make the 3.5 million capacity mark. They have a fantastic offshore discovery, so they're going to add rigs. That's why Kuwait is going to witness the highest growth in the region in the coming three to four years, year-on-year.

"I'm also interested in Africa. It's hard work, but we have a couple of places there where we can take a chance. We're also looking at Asia and Central Europe to start growing the company once we break the path to $2 billion revenue a year."

Women's empowerment
"You have to pass a message. The industry talks about it, but we need to demonstrate it with actions and numbers. In school, women were brighter than men in most cases. They were the smartest, right? So, it's not like I'm doing this to tick a box. On the contrary, women are more articulate and pay more attention to detail. You have to enforce a quota. I know people don't like it, but there's no other way to significantly raise the percentage of women in the energy industry."

Younger generations
"In my time, I broke the record for staying offshore for 78 days. But when I was giving a speech to students at the University of North Carolina, they looked at me like I was crazy to be proud of that. They said, why would you stay offshore for 78 days?

"So, I cannot judge that I'm right and they're wrong or vice versa. It's just a different time. The only thing I always tell them, I mean, tell my own kids, is you have to have a work ethic."

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