CAIRO/RIYADH: The earning season for the third quarter is over with SABIC and Petrochem leading some 26 enlisted companies in the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) that rebounded from a nine-month 2020 net loss to profit this year, according to data compiled by Arab News from Tadawul. The findings give indications of a positive recovery from the pandemic’s adverse effects on the economy last year. While SABIC boosted its profits to be the highest this year in terms of value, Petrochem was leading when it comes to the rise in percentage. The National Petrochemical Company (Petrochem) recorded the most significant change in profit, growing by a staggering 5,400 percent to reach a profit of SR1.2 billion ($320 billion) for the nine-month period ending on 30 September 2021. This was driven by higher product prices and drops in the Zakat provision. It was followed by Takween Advanced Industries which earned SR50.4 million ($13.4 billion) for 9M 2021, leaping by over 2,000 percent compared to the same period last year. The shift to profits was attributed to increases in revenues and a decline in general and administrative costs. Sipchem posted an increase of 1,700 percent in its net profit for the first three quarters of 2021 to gain SR2.3 billion ($613 billion). Again, rising revenues contributed to the improvement in profitability this year. The mean value of the 26 companies" profitability percentage change was 679 percent, while the median value was a lower 223 percent. This demonstrates the outliers" large effects on the mean value. More than half of the companies experienced a less-than 300 percent expansion in their net profit. Other companies, such as the ones mentioned above, had much higher rates pushing the mean value up considerably. Overall, when looking at companies that experienced the highest growth rates in their profitability, it was mainly attributed to healthier revenues and higher product prices which might have been the result of a recovering economy following the Covid-19 pandemic.