‘Unprecedented’ rise in road bids
PROJECTS: R25BN TENDERS INVITED SO FAR THIS YEAR
Raubex also getting infrastructure opportunities from private clients and developers.
month awarded R1 billion worth of road rehabilitation work by the KwaZulu-Natal department of transport and received contract awards worth about R815 million from Sanral.
He said Sanral also awarded a R420 million contract to Raubex to complete the construction of the N1-29 Musina Ring Road.
Fourie said the order book of Raubex’s road and earthworks division increased by 71% to R5.46 billion at end-February from R3.19 billion in the previous year.
He said the division’s
Sanral order book at end-February 2019 was at R207.6 million, the lowest in the company’s history, with total revenue derived from Sanral slumping to 1.9% at end-February from 12.5% in the previous year.
But Fourie said Raubex’s Sanral order book has increased from 3% to 13% in the past year and is back at R1.275 billion.
“There is still potential for another R5 billion or R6 billion of [Sanral] work that is pending award, so that could increase substantially further if they award these potential contracts that have been put out to tender. That is quite exciting.
“Sanral is very buoyant and says they have not had any budget cuts from government,” Fourie said.
“There is no indication from Sanral that it is not carrying on with any of these projects.
“They said the awards are imminent. We understand that to be four to six weeks but they did not give a date,” he said.
Fourie said Raubex is also obtaining new infrastructure opportunities from private clients and developers, owing to other contractors defaulting on their contracts and going into liquidation or business rescue.
“One of their preferences is to deal with a listed company that has a strong balance sheet. There are not a lot of them left. In this last year, we had a lot of new clients or opportunities coming to us. We believe there could be quite an exciting pipeline of new work in this.”
Fourie said there was an overall improvement in Raubex’s financial performance across all three divisions – roads and earthworks, materials and infrastructure – in the year to end-February.
Raubex on Friday reported a 183.7% increase in headline earnings per share to 161.7 cents from 57 cents in the prior year.
Revenue rose by 2.5% to R8.73 billion while operating profit improved by 132% to R480.5 million.
Sanral is buoyant and says they have not had any budget cuts from government