Laurence Freedman did talk about the wetlands project for a few minutes. I regret that I didn't pay more attention to the specifics here, and my recall is a bit patchy.
The only points I remember is that the wetlands site is 200 hectares, and I think they said that work at the site had just begun. The pictures of the site on page 8 of the presentation announcement would seem to back this up.
Based upon what Edshan stated in the previous post, this would suggest they are behind schedule on this project. Maybe this isn't so surprising, as these major projects are seldom completed on time.
My main concern, however, has been that these big projects in China have been distracting the company from chasing up work outside of China, and given the dearth of news regarding the international business over the past 12 months or so, as well as the comment in the AGM about the international business having been underfunded, it would seem that this has been a problem. I'm still hopeful that there will some news about a new contract before the year is out.
Regarding the various canal projects, I remember they did discuss this but I can't recall the specifics. I do remember that they showed a map of China showing the provinces in China in which the company was involved, and several provinces shown on the map were highlighted. They also mentioned that one of their Chinese employees had found a cheap source of zeolites and volcanic materials from Inner Mongolia.
On the Licensees, the only relevant point mentioned in the AGM was that they weren't involved in any work in Asia outside of China. They made that point clear, and this would suggest they haven't got any work so far via ISZA, their agent in Malaysia.
They did mention something about the project they were awarded in Brazil in 2015: apparently, the Brazilian who helped them win that project had some involvement with the company while he was a student in Europe, and this example would seem to highlight the importance of developing and recruiting new skilled people.
On your last question regarding the breakdown of the China work, I'm not entirely sure, but I do remember that Freedman said when discussing China that this financial year '40% of the work was from the China contracting business'. My guess is that he meant here that 40% of the China work is from our own sourcing, i.e not through BHZQ, but this is just my assumption.
One thing that I found disappointing at the AGM is that there didn't seem to be enough time for questions, with only about six or seven asked before time ran out. I definitely got the impression there were a few other people there who wanted to ask questions.
I don't think this was because the management were trying to avoid questions, I think the problem was that several of their employees from China were at the AGM, and the Chinese employees had put together a couple of videos about the company which were shown at the AGM.
I can understand why they wanted to get the Chinese employees involved, but the videos ate up too much time in my opinion, and I would have preferred to hear a few more questions.
PET Price at posting:
38.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
