The Hindu Business Line : SAAG-RR plans public-cum-rights issue

While not wanting to disclose the amount to be raised through the issue, pending a company board meeting for the purpose, SAAG-RR's Managing Director, Mr R. Sriram, told Business Line that the company needed working capital for its growing business. He said that the company had orders worth Rs 40 crore on hand, of which Rs 30 crore would be executed in the current year. He noted that the company had "a full year ahead of us" for further order bookings.

Only last week did the company get its largest ever order — for Rs 9.1 crore — from the National Institute for Research in Productive Health, Mumbai. The order, secured through a tender floated by the Institute's contractors, Hindustan Steelworks Construction Ltd, Kolkata, is for `construction of a quarantine building including roads' for a National Centre for Primate Breeding and Research, near Mumbai.

Asked about SAAG-RR's performance in 2005-06, Mr Sriram said that it was in line with the company's projections. (The company had earlier said that it would achieve a turnover of Rs 30 crore for the year, against Rs 16 crore in 2004-05.) He said the company had set itself a target of Rs 50 crore for the current year.

SAAG-RR had said in March that it would create a special purpose vehicle to own and operate a workover rig (to repair oil wells). Part of the proceeds of the issue would go towards the equity of the SPV. The rig would be available with the company in a couple of months, just in time to respond to an expected tender of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Mr Sriram said.