TODAY'S HEADLINE


MIDAS SEES BIG DEALS IN CHINA RAIL SECTOR  
Mainboard'listed aluminium extrusion and rail coach'maker Midas Holdings is poised for a strong business recovery, now that Beijing has completed its year'long investigation of the July 2011 catastrophic high'speed train crash in China, according to its chief executive o'cer Patrick Chew Hwa Kwang.

Besides the Chinese capital approving spending that has been put on hold on its national high'speed rail grid, Chinese cities are also embarking on aggressive projects to build metro systems.

According to Mr Chew, after a year'long freeze the Chinese Ministry of Railway and state'owned rail enterprises CSR Corp (China Southern Rail) and China CNR (Northern Rail) have started pushing ahead with the 2.5 trillion yuan (S$498 billion) railway construction and upgrading programme under China's 2010'2015 Five Year Plan.

"Banks are commi''ng to 'nance some two trillion yuan, while the government is underwriting bonds and o'ering a 50 per cent tax break on yield to bondholders," he said. "Almost 90 billion yuan has already been raised." Meanwhile, metro systems have started ramping up construction, he added.

In March this year, Midas's 32.5 per cent owned joint venture company Nanjing SR Puzhen Rail Transport (NPRT) was awarded a metro contract worth 526.9 million yuan for the supply of 23 train sets, or 115 train cars, to the Suzhou Metro Line 2 Project. In May, Midas and its associate secured two metro contracts worth a total of 62.2 million yuan. And a week ago, Midas joint venture company NPRT clinched a 860 million yuan contract from Dongguan Rail Transit Co Ltd to supply metro train sets to the Dongguan Rapid Railway R2 Line Project.

This is a welcome turnaround for the company, after a year when double'digit growth suddenly became double'digit contraction following the July 2011 crash near the coastal city of Wenzhou which killed at least 35 people.

It showed in the company's 'nancial results. Midas's FY 2011 net pro't dipped 22 per cent to 187.4 million yuan. For the 'rst quarter of this year, net pro't fell 74.7 per cent year on year to 15.26 million yuan, as revenue declined 22.3 per cent to 230.38 million yuan.


NEWS BUZZ


Keppel Kazakhstan  
Tie'up wins US$242m jack'up rig deal  
Keppel Kazakhstan LLP and its consortium partner, Ersai Caspian Contractor LLC, Kazakhstan, have won a KFELS B Class jack'up rig contract worth US$242mil from Teniz Burgylau LLP. It is slated for delivery in Q1 2015 and will be deployed in the Caspian Sea when it is completed.
Keppel Kazakhstan is an associated company of Keppel O&M, a wholly'owned company of Keppel Corporation Limited.

Tiger Airways (S$0.715) 
Load factor falls in June
Tiger Airways carried 503,000 passengers in June 2012, a 9% decrease from a year ago. Its passenger load factor slipped 1 percentage point to 85%. For the 12 months to June 2012, passenger load factor slipped 5 percentage points to 81%, and the number of passengers carried decreased 18% year'on'year to 5.12mil.

Tiger Singapore carried 365,000 passengers in June, a 6% increase from a year ago, and passenger load factor remained at 86%. For the 12 months to June, Tiger Singapore carried 3.95mil passengers, a 28% increase from a year ago. Passenger load factor slipped 5 percentage points to 81%.

Source: The Business Times

Source: AmFraser