NRW, Seven Group lift earnings

Shares in NRW Holdings and Seven Group Holdings were stronger today after reporting improved earnings on the back of strong resources and infrastructure markets, with NRW adding its first interim dividend in five years.

NRW increased revenue to $521.1 million for the half year to December, an increase of 50.9 per cent on the prior comparative period.

Net earnings increased to $28.2 million compared with $15.3 million in the previous period.

The company declared an interim dividend of 2 cents per share, fully franked. This was the first interim dividend since 2014.

Managing director Jules Pemberton said the results were a credit to the delivery and support teams across the business.

“The results reflect the continued growth in activity which saw revenues increase in the previous financial year by 95 per cent and in the last six months by a further 51 per cent,” he said.

“Delivering this scale of revenue increase profitably has been a core focus for the business teams across the group and I am delighted to be reporting their success.”

Mr Pemberton said a key target opportunity included securing work on iron ore projects.

“Progress to date has been extremely positive following the awards of South Flank for BHP in July 2018, the Koodaideri Plant site for Rio Tinto announced in January 2019 and the award of FMG’s stage one Eliwana rail package in February 2019,” he said.

“I am also looking forward to integrating and developing the RCR Mining Technologies business following the successful completion in February of the acquisition announced in January 2019.”

Mr Pemberton said this would provide a very strong foundation on which to build a broader maintenance services business.

The company increased its order book at December 2018 to $2.4 billion.

Seven Group today reported a 45 per cent increase in trading revenue to $2 billion and a 61 per cent increase in underlying net profit to $257 million.

Statutory net profit was dented by a write-down by associated company Seven West Media.

Managing director Ryan Stokes said the result reflected the breadth of its operational businesses that are leveraging the strength of the mining production cycle, infrastructure investment and east coast gas market.

Its core businesses include the Westrac Caterpillar dealership and the Coates Hire equipment business.

The group said it expected underlying EBIT in FY19 to be up 25 per cent on the previous year.

Seven Group shares closed 12.2 per cent higher today at $19.02 and NRW shares closed 9.6 per cent higher at $2.28.