MRCB’s earnings surge, thanks to Platinum Sentral, Q Sentral

Q Sentral is a 45-storey Grade A office tower.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian Resources Corp Bhd (MRCB) more than doubled its earnings to RM330.39mil for the financial year ended Dec 31, 2015, spurred in large part to a disposal made early in 2015 -- the RM740mil sale of Platinum Sentral, which gave it a RM220,5mil gain.

MRCB, which improved its bottom line by 116.5% on 12% higher revenue of RM1.697bil, attributed the better results also to the completion of its 45-storey office tower, Q Sentral, as well as other ongoing development projects.

As for the fourth-quarter (Q4) performance, the property development and engineering group told Bursa Malaysia that it swung to a net profit of RM26.79mil in Q4 from a net loss of RM5.28mil a year earlier.

This was on the back of a 20.3% year-on-year drop in revenue to RM388.2mil.

MRCB, whose biggest single shareholder is the Employees Provident Fund (38.37% equity stake), said the strong performance and value created from the monetisation and crystallisation of the group’s assets -- including disposals to the real estate investment trust, MRCB-Quill REIT -- was a direct result of the group’s corporate transformation plan.

“The group’s recent additions to its strategic land bank, and it winning several new major construction contracts are in line with the group’s growth strategy,” it said.

“MRCB scored a hat-trick of major job wins in 2015, namely the development of Cyberjaya City Centre, the regeneration of KL Sports City and Kwasa Utama Commercial development, totalling nearly RM15bil.”

It said the group would continue to focus on its property project launches and actively participate in tendering for more construction contracts to build its order book.

“With all these in place, the board is optimistic of its immediate prospects in financial year 2016,” the company said.

MRCB shares closed unchanged on Monday at RM1.21 with 2.86 million shares changing hands.