CEO: Gabungan AQRS prospects remain intact
PETALING JAYA: Gabungan AQRS Bhd, one of the construction players linked to possible contract wins in the Pan Borneo Highway and the East Coast Rail Link, saw its share take a beating yesterday morning.
But the company’s chief executive officer Datuk Azizan Jaafar, who has been credited with turning around the company after assuming the helm about two years ago, said the company’s prospects are still intact in light of the change in government.
“We are a home-grown construction company that has proven itself. The new government’s policy of improving the transparency of awarding contracts should benefit us. We have won local projects purely on merit,” Azizan told StarBiz.
According to Azizan, the company welcomes the decision by the government to review major projects to ensure that con- tracts are tendered out fairly and that the projects themselves are for a better Malaysia.
Gabungan AQRS’s shares hit limit down in trading yesterday, to close at RM1.12. Its warrants dropped by around 70% to close the day at eight sen a piece.
The stock has a large institutional shareholding, making up around 56% of its holdings. Dealers said foreign funds were the main sellers.
The stock also counts local government funds as shareholders, such as the Employees Provident Fund EPF (6.5%) and Retirement Fund Inc or KWAP (6%).
Yesterday, the company posted the results of its first quarter ended March 31, 2018 and declared a two sen interim dividend along with a 1 sen special dividend.
The company reported a revenue of RM127.5mil for the period, representing a 19.8% year-on-year decrease as a result of the absence of land sales revenue amounting to RM90.4mil that was recognised in the corre- sponding quarter last year.
The company’s net profit edged up slightly by 2.1% from a year ago, to hit RM16.5mil.
In its statement, Gabungan said it continues to run at an efficient pace, noting its operating expenses to revenue ratio which stood at 9.4% in its latest quarter.
The company said its current outstanding construction order book stood at RM2.7bil, which mostly consists of infrastructure jobs including the Light Rail Transit 3 (LRT3), the Sungai Besi–Ulu Kelang Expressway (SUKE) and the Pusat Pentadbiran Sultan Ahmad Shah (PPSAS) in Kuantan.
It has yet to win any contracts from the Pan Borneo Highway or ECRL projects.
Azizan added that the company’s current order book would ensure earnings visibility for the next three financial years. He also said that the company has a cash pile of RM138.2mil and has lowered its net gearing to 0.06 times compared with 0.11 times a year in the last quarter.