Midas Holdings is poised for a strong business recovery, now
that Beijing has completed its year-long investigation of the
July 2011 catastrophic high-speed train crash in China,
according to its chief executive officer Patrick Chew Hwa
Kwang. Besides the Chinese capital approving spending that
has been put on hold on its national high-speed rail grid,
Chinese cities are also embarking on aggressive projects to
build metro systems. According to Mr Chew, after a year-long
freeze the Chinese Ministry of Railway (MoR) and state-owned
rail enterprises CSR Corp (China Southern Rail) and China CNR
(Northern Rail) have started pushing ahead with the RMB2.5
trillion (S$498 bn) railway construction and upgrading
programme under China's 2010-2015 Five Year Plan. Mr
Chew's views add further conviction to our analystâs opinion
that the MoR could start giving out new orders again for the
industry and Midas, with a large exposure, would be the
obvious beneficiary. However, do note that results would take a few quarters to improve from order wins. Currently, our TP of S$0.49 is based on 1x P/B and the stock is trading at 0.7x P/B.