Publicly listed construction company PT Totalindo Eka Persada has achieved 10 percent of its target to book Rp 3 trillion (US$218 million) in new contracts in 2020, following its weak financial performance and plummeting share prices last year. 

Totalindo booked Rp 309.1 billion in new projects by February, the company's director Eko Wardoyo said during an event at the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) in Jakarta on Friday. 

The projects include Sky House apartment in Alam Sutera, Tangerang, Banten; Hotel Lido Extention in Sukabumi, West Java; and Halam Network International. 

The company will also continue construction of carry-over projects from 2019 valued at Rp 1.43 trillion, including 31 Sudirman Suites in Makassar, South Sulawesi; Kingland Avenue apartment in South Tangerang, Banten; as well as Nuansa Cilangkap and Klapa Village Tower B in East Jakarta. 

The projects will go ahead, Totalindo executives said, although the company booked Rp 30 billion in losses in the third quarter of 2019, the latest available financial performance indicator.

“[The loss] was due to tax audits in 2016, which had to be included in our September 2019 financial report. We had to pay Rp 64 billion in tax with [around] Rp 30 billion in penalties,” Eko explained. 

The figure was jarring because in the second quarter of 2019, the company recorded Rp 60 billion in profit, a 46.3 percent increase from the quarter before. The company also increased its revenue by 63.5 percent to Rp 631 billion in the third quarter of 2019, from Rp 386 billion the previous quarter. 

In addition, the price of Totalindo’s shares, which are traded under the code TOPS on the IDX, nosedived throughout 2019. In the past year, the stocks have fallen 93.79 percent from a price of Rp 805 per share to Rp 50 at close of trading on Friday. 

“Aside from TOPS, other issuers, both private and state-owned, recorded similar performances because the property sector is [limping]. The share prices of construction issuers generally declined, but TOPS’ plunge was quite deep,” Eko said. 

The IDX recorded that the property, real estate and building construction sector has fallen 9.53 percent year-to-date, a steeper decline than the Jakarta Composite Index, which fell 5.67 percent during the same time period. (ydp)