Stocks to watch: Green Packet, Ranhill, plantation sector stocks, Sime Darby
GREEN PACKET BHD garnered three separate contracts with companies from Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine to provide its modems. It did not reveal the value of the contracts.
Meanwhile, REDTONE INTERNATIONAL BHD said it would increase the number of locations of its free Wi-Fi hotspots.
Ranhill president and CEO, Tan Sri Hamdan Mohamad has said its second 190MW combined cycle gas turbine power plant in Sabah is expected to be completed by end-2010.
Meanwhile, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services revised the outlook on Ranhill to stable from negative and affirmed the 'B' long-term corporate credit rating on the company.
It also affirmed the 'B-' issue rating on the US$220 million five-year senior unsecured notes due in October 2011.
"We revised the outlook and affirmed the ratings to reflect the improvement in Ranhill's financial risk profile due to lower debt following the transfer of its water assets to the Malaysian government," said Standard & Poor's credit analyst Andrew Wong.
S&P also said Ranhill was moving away from risky ventures by exiting oil exploration projects and focusing on the stable utilities businesses. This alleviated the downward pressure on the rating.
However, it did caution Ranhill's near-term liquidity is weak. The company had unrestricted cash of RM355 million as at June 30, 2009 was not enough to cover the RM506 million of debt facilities that are due for repayment over the next 12 months. However, most of these maturities are performance guarantees, which will naturally end as projects get completed.
Top plantation analyst, Dorab Mistry, who heads vegetable oils trading at Godrej International said Malaysian palm oil stocks would peak at 2.1 million tonnes in December before declining next year. Yields would be affected by the El Nino.
Separately, Affin Research upgraded the domestic plantations sector to overweight on the back of trading opportunities in the next six months.
Sime Darby said its 75%-owned Sime Darby Water Resources (Perak) Sdn Bhd had executed a groundwater resource development agreement with the Perak government.
Written by Ellina Badri
Friday, 04 December 2009 07:50
theedge malaysia
