Investing.com - China Communications Construction Company Limited (HK:1800) (CCCC) now expects to get back a cancelled multi-billion-dollar contract to build a railway in Malaysia, the company’s head of overseas business Li Qingwei said in an earnings conference on Tuesday.
The contract was a major win for the company’s 2017 order book but was later cancelled. The construction company now expects that talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Malaysian Premier Mahatir Mohamad could get the project back on track.
The $15 billion East Coast Rail Link project (ECRL) was planned to connect Peninsular Malaysia’s east coast to Port Klang in Selangor State, on the coast of the Strait of Malacca. The project was stopped after Mahatir won a landslide election victory nine months after the project broke ground.
If CCCC manages to get the contract back on its books, the company may still meet its target of hiking its full-year new bookings by 8%, Li said.
New orders in the first half of 2018 went up by 1.7% to $62.7 billion, of which 28% of contract values come from overseas. CCCC’s interim net profit climbed 4.9% to $1.21 billion.