MRCB ....it's a slow ascent?

Money Plant


Fresh from my lucky foray into construction stocks of UEMWorld and Gamuda in early 2007 up to about July-August of the same year, I was looking for other construction companies to invest in especially with the 9MP projects all lined up. Unsavvy as I was (and still am), I selected MRCB and HSL which boasted 0f high book values.

The price for MRCB was declining then so I bought at the lowest for the year ( clever eh..) but the timing was all wrong to say the least, as it was
just before the March 8 2008 General Election when the current government lost its two-third majority in parliament and five states taken by the opposition as well as the global financial crisis triggered by the US subprime fiasco..... MRCB subsequently had a merry slide, wiping off most of my investment in the space of eight months.. ( Lessons learnt......I should not have read and listened to the mainstream media most of the time!). From RM2.01 it stumbled pathetically to RM 0.69 at one time in Sept 2008. I was exasperated... fun, yes but this was too much I thought..... I know MRCB is a capable company, quite well managed but it is too big and those borrowings for mammoth projects in KL Sentral.. may be just too much liabilities without fresh leads in the construction industry.

To offset my heavy paper losses , I bought a substantial number of MRCB shares at RM0.70 in November 2008 and through the depression of the economic meltdown and my overseas travels, I have almost forgotten about this purchase...... look, today's MRCB share price is RM1.35........ Gosh! Should I clear my position now and not wait for that unknown growth? I note that among my market portfolios, MRCB is the only one not paying dividends this year (PICORPS is yet to make an announcement)... last year's dividend rate was laughable .. despite the construction stocks slowly making a comeback.... I will stick to trading/service and plantations... in fact I will use the profit from the sale to buy more TM shares and get the regular dividends. This is a better option then putting it in the bank or Unit Trusts.