KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 29): Piling and foundation specialist Econpile Holdings Bhd has bagged a RM34.1 million contract from YTL Corp Bhd’s subsidiary Syarikat Pembenaan Yeoh Tiong Lay Sdn Bhd to undertake bored piling and pile cap works for a portion of the Gemas-Johor Baru electrified double track rail project.

Econpile executive director and group chief executive officer Raymond Pang said the latest contract, Econpile’s order book stands at RM1.3 billion which is expected to be recognised over the next two to three years.

The line encompasses 192 km of electrified double-track, stations, electric train depots, land viaduct, bridges, electrification and signaling systems from Gemas to Johor Baru.

"Econpile will be undertaking the contracted works at Section 3.0-Paloh to Renggam," said Pang in a statement today.

The overall duration of the contract is four months, and is expected to contribute positively to the group in the financial year ending June 30, 2019.

In a separate filing with Bursa Malaysia today, Econpile announced that its net profit for the fourth financial quarter ended June 30, 2018 (4QFY18) fell 6.7% to RM19.46 million from RM20.86 million a year ago, due to a higher percentage of the revenue contribution from the infrastructure projects which generally yield a lower margin.

Infrastructure projects made up 26.4% of the group’s total revenue in 4QFY18, compared with just 10.8% in 4QFY17.

As a result, earnings per share was lower at 1.46 sen for 4QFY18 compared with 1.56 sen for 4QFY17. Quarterly revenue, however, rose 21.9% to RM192.28 million from RM157.68 million a year ago.

For the full FY18, the group's net profit increased 7.8% to RM87.1 million from RM80.77 million in FY17, while revenue rose 25.2% to RM728.4 million from RM581.91 million the previous year.

Pang said going forward, Econpile will be focusing on improving efficiency to strengthen the bottomline growth.

“We will continue to be prudent in the new financial year, and focus on optimising our resources more efficiently. We have invested extensively into our machinery fleet in the past two to three years, which would be sufficient to meet the wide-ranging requirements of ongoing projects.

“We aim to chart sustainable growth in the future,” he added.

Econpile shares closed unchanged at 86.5 sen today, with 6.54 million shares done, bringing a market capitalisation of RM1.16 billion.