Boustead Projects' Q4 net profit falls 31%

BOUSTEAD Projects Limited reported a 31 per cent slump in net profit for the fourth quarter ended March 31 to S$5.38 million, mainly dragged by higher costs and larger share of loss of an associate company and joint ventures.

Group revenue rose 22 per cent to S$59.4 million during the quarter. Contributing 84 per cent to total revenue for the quarter was design-and-build revenue, which grew 21 per cent from a year ago to S$49.7 million.

For the whole year, Boustead Projects clocked in revenue of S$255.5 million - almost similar to fiscal 2014. But again, net profit was down, by 7 per cent to S$22.9 million, amid higher overhead and finance expenses, and greater share of loss of an associate company and joint ventures.

"Our financial performance in our first year following our demerger from Boustead Singapore Limited has been reasonable given the harsh business landscape we are currently operating in," said Thomas Chu, managing director of Boustead Projects.

"We continue to maintain our leadership position as the design-and-build partner of choice in the challenging industrial real estate market, having secured a number of important contracts from new and repeat clients," he added. "Our industrial leasehold portfolio - under our leasing business - continues to expand and contribute increasing profit to our group, helping us to partially counter the weaker margins that we are experiencing at our design-and-build business. Our portfolio has become an important source of recurring income to weather the difficult times."

Mr Chu said the group will continue to seek M&A and investment opportunities to grow its business, not only domestically and regionally, but also across different real estate sectors and industry clusters.