Roy Cokayne
MURRAY & Roberts (M&R) has set its sights on being a leading international diversified project engineering, procurement and construction group in selected natural resources market sectors by 2020.
Henry Laas, M&R’s chief executive, said yesterday that the listed construction and engineering group was specifically targeting the oil and gas, mining, energy and industrial markets where it could leverage its current capabilities.
M&R reported yesterday that diluted continuing headline earnings a share grew 67 percent year on year to R2.05 in the year to June. Group revenue increased to R36bn from R34.2bn while attributable earnings grew to R1.3bn from R1bn. A gross annual dividend of 50c a share was declared.
The margin fell to 6 percent from 10 percent and the order book at year end declined to R40.9bn from R46.1bn.
Laas attributed this primarily to the run-off in Clough’s order book because its work was changing from longer-term greenfields liquefied natural gas projects to shorter-term brownfields projects.
He said the group had over the past three years delivered on its recovery and growth strategy to restore financial stability and return to profitability and was now proceeding with its longer-term plan to build a “new strategic future”.
The shares fell 0.86 percent to close at R25.34 on the JSE.