CTCI Corp (中鼎工程) on Tuesday said it would continue to focus on markets abroad, as macroeconomic conditions improve.
The nation’s leading engineering, procurement and construction solutions provider for refineries and power plant facilities has revised its estimate for potential sales opportunities across the globe this year to NT$584.6 billion (US$18.03 billion), higher than the NT$570.6 it estimated at the end of the third quarter last year.
In the US market, CTCI hopes to capture opportunities from increasing investments by downstream petrochemical companies, as the cost of using US-produced shale gas as feedstock to produce ethylene is still lower than using naphtha imported from Asia, the company said.
CTCI said it also plans to tap into Russia and Kazakhstan’s abundant oil and gas resources with Chinese partners, and continue to seek participation in India’s steel mill and municipal solid waste incineration projects as well as the Indian government’s “Made in India” initiative.
Last year, the company’s net income rose 1.3 percent annually to NT$2.57 billion, while revenue rose 16.2 percent to NT$67.06 billion. Contributions from new contracts were tallied at NT$65.5 billion last year, down 17.21 percent from 2014 and lower than NT$6.69 billion in 2013.
While Taiwan is still the company’s largest revenue source at 56 percent of total sales last year, CTCI said that 69 percent of new contracts signed last year were from the Middle East, followed by 18 percent in Taiwan and 6 percent in Malaysia, with China representing 4 percent.
As an example, the company last year signed its largest contract with US-based Chicago Bridge & Iron Co to jointly build a petrochemical and plastics complex in Oman worth US$2.8 billion.
CTCI is expected to take half the windfall for the contract and receive preliminary design-phase payments this year, with the bulk of the payments expected between next year and 2018, the company said.
The company on Tuesday also announced that it is to distribute NT$2.4 in dividends, representing 89 percent of its NT$2.69 earnings per share (EPS) for last year.
Jih Sun Securities Investment Consulting Co (日盛投顧) analyst Chiang Chao-peng (江釗亨) yesterday forecast that CTCI’s sales this year would increase 10.36 percent annually to NT$74 billion.
However, he revised downward his net income forecast to NT$2.32 billion and slashed his EPS forecast to NT$3.05 from NT$3.56, due to a forecast increase in bad-debt provisions in the first half of this year correlating to the anticipated rise in sales.
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