KUALA LUMPUR: Dataprep Holdings Bhd's subsidiary has accepted the letter of award (LOA) from Syarikat Prasarana Negara Bhd for the implementation of a cashless bus ticketing system for Rapid KL Buses.

The company said on Friday, Sept 17, that its 55% owned Solsis (M) Sdn Bhd, had received the LOA dated Sept 7 for a contract value not exceeding RM34.99 million.

Dataprep said the scope of works include to design, installation and commissioning of the cashless bus ticketing system for Rapid KL Buses.

It said the duration for the job was six months from the date of the LOA, and that the project would contribute positively to its earnings.

Earlier Friday, Bernama quoted Dataprep chief executive officer, Cheam Tat Inn as saying he was optimistic the company, which posted pre-tax losses for two consecutive years, would return to the black in the financial year ending March, 31, 2011.

Cheam said his optimism was underpinned by the company’s diversification into more segments in the IT business and secured many high-margin projects.

"Dataprep expects a revenue growth of between 35% and 45% in the current financial year," he said after the AGM.

Its pre-tax loss for FY ended March 31, 2010 rose to RM5.683 million from RM5.456 million in FY2009.  For FY2008, it suffered a pre-tax loss of RM3.202 million.   Revenue fell by 18 per cent to RM44.595 million for FY2010 from RM54.164 million in FY2009.

Cheam said Dataprep has seen in upward trend in revenue for the past three quarters, growing by 10% to 12% and based on the performance, it would return to the pre-crisis level or even higher.

"Our recent transformation efforts had allowed us to focus on high value-added projects and we have managed to secure many projects compared to our focus on low-margin projects a few years back," he said.

Its new projects are network integration, managed services, security, technology integration areas, he said.

He said currently, the company has an order book of over RM90 million mostly from projects received in the first six months this year.

"New projects, cost-cutting measures and increasing demand in the IT industry point to a recovery in profit," he said.

On international projects, Cheam said, the company was actively looking for merger and acquisitions abroad, along with continuous focus on the domestic market going forward.

"We have the structure in place to explore. Currently, we are in talks with several companies. However, we have not identified any potential candidates or concluded any agreements," he said.