Sri Lanka Dockyard Sept quarter profit almost doubles

Sri Lankan ship builder Colombo Dockyard said net profit for the September 2009 quarter almost doubled from a year ago with earnings boosted by orders to build new vessels for overseas customers. The yard, which is majority owned by Japan's Onomichi Dockyard, said in a stock exchange filing that September quarter net profit shot up 93 percent to 721 million rupees from a year ago.
Revenue for the quarter rose 40.2 percent to almost 3.3 billion rupees.
Earnings per share for the quarter went up to 10.54 rupees from 5.46 rupees in the previous year.
Ship repair revenue fell but ship building revenue soared and the yard's heavy engineering division also reported sharply higher revenue.
The yard has built and delivered a series of specialised anchor handling tug supply vessels for an Indian ship owner in recent months.
Colombo Dockyard also has said it has a full order book until the end of next year.
It is building or has on order two 250 passenger vessels for an Indian customer and four multipurpose support vessels for the Singapore unit of Greatship India.
In September, the yard said it has won an order worth about seven billion rupees to build two tugs for a Singapore customer with an option for two more vessels of the same type.
The vessels are scheduled to be delivered by the end of June 2011 and the end of September 2011.
Colombo Dockyard said net profit in the nine months to September 30, 2009 were up 80 percent to 1.8 billion rupees from the same period last year.