Indonesia's Semen Gresik Q4 profit jumps 87 pct

Sun Mar 23, 2008 11:24pm EDT

JAKARTA, March 24 (Reuters) - PT Semen Gresik Tbk SMGR.JK, Indonesia's largest cement firm, posted results on Monday indicating a better-than-expected 87 percent rise in fourth quarter net profit, boosted by a building boom and more efficient operations.

Southeast Asia's biggest economy has seen a push by authorities to increase investment on ageing infrastructure including toll roads, ports, airports and power plants.

State-owned Semen Gresik's net profit rose to 503.5 billion rupiah ($54.85 million) rupiah in October-December from 268.7 billion rupiah a year ago, according to Reuters calculations based on its full year earnings released on Monday and nine-month results.

Analysts polled by Reuters Estimates had predicted a full-year net profit of 1.65 trillion rupiah, implying a fourth quarter net profit of 378.7 billion rupiah.

Gresik's revenue climbed 11.8 percent in the quarter to 2.51 trillion rupiah, as its sales volume for the period climbed 35 percent to 3.9 million tonnes, outpacing a 6.1 percent rise in national consumption.

In 2007, domestic demand for cement rose 6.6 percent to 34.2 million tonnes in 2007 from the previous year, due to such infrastructure projects and property developments in the biggest cities, although Gresik's domestic sales volume for the year rose only by only 1.6 percent.

To meet anticipated higher demand in the future, Gresik had said it plans to construct new factories and its own power plants in an effort to boost its annual capacity by 5 million tonnes, with a total investment of $1.5 billion.

The company had said it aims to boost its capacity by 40 percent to 22.9 million tonnes by 2013 from around 16 million tonnes currently. ($1=9,180 rupiah)

(Reporting by Harry Suhartono, editing by Ed Davies)