Benalec Holdings Bhd, an integrated marine construction and vessel chartering services provider, made its debut on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia with a 36 sen premium over its offer price of RM1 per share. A total of 8.6 million shares were traded.

'We are happy with the share price of RM1.36 and feel quite confident of doing much better in future,' said managing director, Vincent Leaw Seng Hai here today. Upon listing, Benalec is expected to have a market capitalisation, of approximately RM730 million.

Benalec's initial public offering (IPO) will raise RM100 million in total from local and foreign institutional investors as well as local retail investors.

The company has also determined that its investors would get dividends of 15 per cent and 30 per cent net profit for the financial year 2011 and financial year 2012 respectively.

Leaw said Benalec was in the midst of procuring the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) licence from the Singapore government, to enable the company to bid for land reclamation projects.

'Hopefully, can we get the licence within the next one to two months, and secure all the contracts, under our branch office in Singapore.

'We are concentrating now more on our markets in Penang, Melaka, Johor and Singapore, for the future.We also plan to explore more overseas prospects,' he added.

He also said, according to independent market researchers, the South East Asian market for the next 10 years, has about RM170 billion projects available, and offers good prospects for Benalec to invest and expand its operations beyond domestic borders.

The company currently has an order book of RM855 million, of which RM664 million is in unbilled orders and will last until 2016.

Meanwhile, OSK Research in a research note today said, it views Benalec as the main beneficiary of more marine construction jobs, given its 17.9 per cent marketshare in the industry.

'Apart from the domestic front, we envisage some wins from Singapore, where its sister company Oceanlec, has won a building material supply contract,' the research house said.

Oceanlec has signed an undertaking to not compete for jobs that Benalec bids for.

Oceanlec has also agreed to give Benalec, the first right of refusal, as sub-contractor for jobs that it is not licensed to directly bid for. -- Bernama