Billionaire Nagy Toma’s factories clothe Benetton and Decathlon

Nagy Samir Toma is vice chairman and managing director of a group running six garment factories in Egypt, with 4,000 sewing machines and more than 8,500 employees between them. A business directory puts annual capacity at 20.4 million units. The clothes leave under other companies’ labels, including United Colors of Benetton and Decathlon, for which Dice manufactures on contract, according to the data provider Tracxn.

The company his family established in 1989 trades on the Egyptian Exchange under the ticker DSCW with a market capitalisation of roughly 5.3 billion Egyptian pounds, about $106 million at the Aug. 11 rate of 49.88 pounds to the dollar, according to Billionaires.Africa calculations. The family holds most of it.

Sohier Samy Riad chairs the company. Toma’s brother Maged Samir Toma sits on the board alongside Victor Fakhry and two independent directors, Marianne Ghali and Amro Raaouf Mohamed.

Building the factories

The Toma family established Dice Sport and Casual Wear in 1989, making knitted garments for men, women and children.

Two plants followed within five years. Dice 1 and Dice 2 came into operation between 1992 and 1994, giving the business its own sewing capacity rather than leaving it dependent on subcontractors.

Knitting arrived in 1998, when the company added a facility producing 70 tonnes of fabric a month. Dyeing followed in 2002 with the Master-line facility, and a third production plant, Dice 3, opened in 2006.

The company listed on the Egyptian Exchange in July 2008, roughly two decades after it started.

The shape of the business was set by then. Dice was assembling the manufacturing chain stage by stage rather than concentrating on any single part of it, which meant it could quote a customer a price covering everything from yarn to finished garment. Egyptian competitors that only cut and sewed had to build their prices around suppliers they did not control.

Each stage required capital, funded out of a garment business selling into a domestic market and to European buyers who could move orders elsewhere at short notice.

Buying the supply chain

The pace of acquisition picked up sharply after Egypt’s January 2011 revolution, a period the American University in Cairo has used to teach the pressures private textile producers faced and how those pressures changed their business models.

Dice bought United Dyers Inc. in 2011, taking daily dyeing capacity to 45 tonnes. It established a screen print house, TPP, in 2012. It opened a fifth production facility in 2013 and won Rina certification the same year.

Two purchases then changed the company’s scale. Dice acquired the Egyptian Textile Company in 2014 and Alexandria Clothing Company in 2015, both vertically integrated apparel exporters in their own right.

Alexandria Clothing had begun as a boutique knitter selling into the local market and had grown into a full manufacturer running knitting, dyeing, finishing, printing, embroidery, cutting and sewing. It produces more than 45,000 garments a day, ships over 12 million garments a year, employs around 2,100 people and ranks as Egypt’s third-largest exporter of jersey wear. Toma became its chief executive.

That transaction became a teaching case at the American University in Cairo, where finance students work through whether the acquisition made sense given the economic uncertainty Egypt faced. Toma appears in it alongside the company’s chief financial officer, weighing the projections.

Dice spent 2016 integrating what it had bought, then resumed. It acquired the Cairo Cotton Factory in 2017 and established an elastics plant, Elastis, in 2018 to complement the value chain. New dyeing machinery followed in 2020, and in 2022 the company was finalising a deal for a 400,000 square foot sewing factory.

The purchases turned a garment maker into a textile group. Dice now runs fabric knitting, dyeing, finishing and all-over printing, and manufactures elastic, draw-cord and socks alongside the garments. Product categories cover intimates, activewear, athleisure and fashion.

It also went into retail, launching its own brand in the Egyptian market in 2011 under the name Dice Underwear, selling through its own stores and wholesale partners rather than only manufacturing for others.

The group installed a solar plant at the Egyptian Textile Company in 2021 which it says covers all of that subsidiary’s electricity requirement.

The collapse and the buyback

Toma bought 24.6 million shares at 1.5 pounds each in December 2020, spending 37.3 million pounds and lifting his holding from 18.3 percent to 22.9 percent. He sold 10.2 million shares the following month at an average of 3.37 pounds, taking 34.27 million pounds and easing back to 21 percent.

Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority suspended trading in February 2021, pending answers to questions it had put to the company. Dice had told the market weeks earlier that it planned 52 new branches across Egyptian governorates and had received 62 million pounds under an immediate disbursement of export subsidies. Shareholders had also approved withholding dividends until a study established how much liquidity the business needed.

The stock fell to 16 piastres by July 6, 2022, an all-time low and a decline of more than 95 percent from the level at which Toma had sold 18 months earlier.

The company raised capital that month, with an issue oversubscribed by 94.84 percent that brought in 251.32 million pounds across 1.25 billion new shares.

Maged Toma sold in October 2022, disposing of 108.57 million shares at an average of 33 piastres for 36.69 million pounds and cutting his stake from 14.77 percent to 8.70 percent.

A consortium approached the company the same month with a preliminary offer for up to 90 percent of the issued share capital. The regulator subsequently approved a mandatory tender offer from Toma for Commercial and Industrial Investments, the family’s investment vehicle.

The shares recovered to an all-time high of 2.23 pounds on July 28, 2025 and now trade at 1.92. They are up 12.5 percent over the past month and down 9.72 percent over twelve months.

What the family holds

Three named family stakes appear on the register and together they control the company.

Toma for Commercial and Industrial Investments holds 27.68 percent, Nagy Samir Toma Thomas 21.147 percent and Maged Samir Toma Thomas 11.498 percent, with a further holding recorded under Saif Nagy Samir. The three named positions come to 60.3 percent, worth roughly $64 million at the current price.

Toma’s own direct stake is worth about 1.12 billion pounds, or $22.5 million, before counting whatever share he holds of the family investment company.

Total assets stood at 5.19 billion pounds at the end of 2024, up 7.77 percent on the previous quarter. Earnings per share are 14.8 piastres on a trailing basis, putting the stock on roughly 13 times earnings. Dice has never paid a dividend and has said it has no plans to.

The head office sits on Anabeeb Al Petrol Street in Gesr El Suez, Cairo, with the main plant on the Misr Ismailia desert road. The group holds ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 certifications.

Dice has described its advantage as involvement in every manufacturing process from yarn to garment, including retail, which it says strengthens its position against global competitors.