DUBAI: Dubai’s Drake & Scull said yesterday that unforeseen delays to two major projects in Saudi Arabia were responsible for the contractor missing analysts’ expectations with a 27.1 percent decline in first-quarter net profit.
The firm made a net profit of Dh45.7m ($12.4m) in the first three months of 2014, compared with Dh62.7m in the corresponding period of last year, it said in a bourse filing.
Three analysts, on average, had forecast a net profit for the period of Dh58.9m. Shares in Drake & Scull initially slumped 3.4 percent in early trading before recovering slightly to Dh1.72, a 1.7 percent reverse.
Mukhtar Safi, the firm’s chief financial officer, said in a statement it had faced “a slowdown in our general contracting business in Saudi Arabia due to unforeseen delays in two major projects which are not recurring,” and that things would improve in the second quarter of the year. Reuters
