Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Mudajaya

Major boardroom changes have sparked speculation of possible emergence of new shareholders at Mudajaya Group Bhd, particularly against the backdrop of continued depressed valuation of the company that makes the infrastructure group an attractive takeover target.

Mudajaya announced a slew of changes to its board. Its major shareholder Ng Ying Loong stepped down as joint managing director (MD) and Anto Joseph is taking over the reins. Also, former Bursa Malaysia Bhd CEO Datuk Yusli Mohamed Yusoff was appointed the company’s chairman.

Ng, in his capacity as a shareholder was unaware of any parties interested in buying into Mudajaya and stressed he would keep his 24.3% equity interest in the company. In addition, a Mudajaya spokesperson said “rumours of new shareholders are unfounded.”

It was reported that Mudajaya might see emergence of “new faces” soon after Ng has stepped down as MD, citing family commitment as the reason. Mudajaya is looking to get in some prominent figures shareholders, board or senior management members.

Beside Ng who holds his interest via Dataran Sentral (M) Sdn Bhd, Mulpha Infrastructure Holdings Sdn Bhd with a 21.84% equity stake is the second largest shareholder, followed by United Flagship Sdn Bhd, which has a 6.56% interest.

Talk of a takeover of Mudajaya is not new as rumours in 2011 had it that Ananda Krishnan’s Tanjong PLC was keen to take a stake in the company. It is believed that Mudajaya’s link to Ananda is Brahmal Vasudevan who holds less than 1% interest in the company. Brahmal also has interest in other public listed companies including Glomac Bhd.
Market observers said its order book replenishment at Mudajaya remains “healthy”, providing upside to its current outstanding order book of RM4.8 billion.

While Mudajaya won a RM720 million contract for the civil works of the extension of the Janamanjung power plant, it is also one of the frontrunners for the extension of the Tanjung Bin power plant.

Joseph will be replacing Ng as he is no rookie to Mudajaya after serving the company for the past 18 years. He has played very important roles in getting Mudajaya to secure jobs in India , the largest being the RM3.4billion Chhattisgarh independent power producer EP contract.

Going forward, the challenges that lie ahead for the engineering group remain daunting with the most pressing being Mudajaya’s first power plant project in India, which has been beset with delays/ The company’s earnings have been affected as a result. The situation is expected to continue in the coming months but it is confidence of meeting the deadline.

The internal target had originally been for Mudajaya to commission the first unit of its 1440MW coal fired power plant by the end of 2011. However, at end 2010, there were delays due to ….

With the delays, the company is now aiming to complete the construction of all four power plants by 2013, with full commissioning the following year.

So Mudajaya is expected to come into its own in terms of earnings in 2014.

No comments:

Blog Archive

Followers

Disclaimer:
Please note that all data given are merely blogger's opinion. It is strongly recommended that you do your own analysis and research before investing.