Friday, May 13, 2011

Sarawak Oil Palms rises on positive 1Q results

KUALA LUMPUR: SARAWAK OIL PALMS BHD [] (SOP) shares rose on Friday, May 13 after it earnings jumped 134% to RM55.54 million in the first quarter ended March 31, 2011 from RM23.67 million a year ago as it benefited mainly from higher crude palm oil (CPO) and palm kernel (PK) prices.

At 9.15am, SOP was up 16 sen to RM3.64 with 15,500 shares traded.

It said on Thursday, May 12 revenue increased by 64.3% to RM238.48 million from RM145.10 million. Earnings per share were 12.84 sen versus 5.52 sen.

'The increase of RM93.4 million in revenue was mainly attributed to the higher average CPO and PK prices realised and sales volume during the period,' it said.

On the outlook, it said the performance of the group was largely dependent on developments in the world edible oil market, bio-diesel market, fossil oil market, movement of ringgit, world economic situation and their corresponding effect on CPO prices.

MIDF Research maintained its buy call on SOP with a revised target price of RM4.45 (from RM4.07).

'We revised our target price to RM4.45 (from RM4.07), based on 11.3 times EPS11, which is one standard deviation above its 5-year historical PE of 8.9 times.

'SOP is currently trading at 8.8x forward PE, which is a 23% discount to the weighted average market PE of 11.5 times,' MIDF Research said in a note May 13.

No comments:

Post a Comment