Progressive Impact aims to grow at 10%-20% annually

SHAH ALAM: Environmental engineering consultancy firm Progressive Impact Corp Bhd is looking to grow its profit by 10%-20% annually, with its new technology systems and expansion plans.
Speaking to reporters after its EGM yesterday, CEO Johar Yusof said the group has launched three new technologies recently, namely predictive emissions monitoring system (PEMS), hybrid waste water and wave glider.
He said the PEMS is used as an alternative to continuous emission monitoring systems, which is a tool to monitor greenhouse gas emission to provide information for combustion control in industrial settings.
On the other hand, Johar said the hybrid waste water is a sewerage treatment plant that turns sludge and effluent from residential and industrial waste into reusable effluent for farming and other purposes, while the wave glider is an autonomous ocean monitoring system that can collect various data for scientific, commercial and military applications.
“So far, we have got a good response from the market. This year, we will start to hit the orders, but the (systems) implementation would be probably in 2016, so we expect the real growth would be seen in 2016.”
“We also plan to go into the Middle East, such as United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, bringing the new technologies that we have, especially the waste water technology,” he added.
Johar acknowledged that the group has secured orders from four local developers for its hybrid waste water technology to be implemented in Iskandar Malaysia, Johor.
However, he declined to disclose how much it expects the new technologies to contribute to its revenue for the financial year ending Dec 31, 2015 (FY15). “It will contribute some,” he said.
At present, Johar said the group’s revenue is mainly from its concession agreement relating to environmental monitoring and data management activities with the government (50%), laboratory testing services (42%) and waste management (8%).
For the second quarter ended June 30, 2015, the group’s net profit grew 8% to RM2.45 million, from RM2.27 million in the previous corresponding quarter.
Revenue however, declined 3.6% to RM20.72 million, compared with RM21.49 million previously.
For the first six months, its net profit rose 77% to RM4.95 million, from RM2.79 million a year ago, from an increase in profit from laboratory testing, and a much lower losses from the waste management engineering segments.
Revenue however, was down 1.6% to RM40.64 million, against RM41.3 million last year. “For this year, we expect our (financial) performance to be almost like last year’s,” Johar said.
Recently, the group secured an extension for its 20-year air and water pollution monitoring concession for an interim period of one year, worth RM22 million, from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (NRE).
“Going forward, we hope to see a balanced contribution from our concession and non-concession business. To become prudent, we must have both,” Johar added.
The group entered into the concession agreement, which granted it exclusive rights to provide continuous ambient air and water quality measurement monitoring services nationwide, on April 14, 1995.