Dubai: Dubai district cooling services provider Empower has downgraded its profit outlook by as much as 8.3 per cent, the utility’s chief executive said in an interview on Tuesday.
Empower, also known as Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corp, now expects a profit of “Dh550 million or better,” compared with a February forecast of Dh600 million, chief executive Ahmad Bin Shafar told Gulf News at a conference in Dubai.
Empower, owned by Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) and Tecom Investments, made Dh516 million profit in 2015.
Bin Shafar did not give a reason for the profit downgrade, telling Gulf News the company had met its targets in the first nine months of the year.
He did, however, say that while a number of stalled projects in Dubai were resuming, “the problem is that they’re not going to move in the same speed that we expected.”
Despite the downgrade, Bin Shafar said he remains bullish with the company targeting to increase its customer base by around 20 per cent to 65,000 by the end of year, up from 54,000.
The utility will also revisit plans for an initial public offering (IPO) in 2017 after ruling out a listing this year in February due to adverse market conditions.
“Empower is doing good. Financially, we are very solid. So there is no need to do an IPO,” he said.
“Next year, we will look at it. We will revisit it.”
Empower has considered listing at least part of the company for several years in what would be a major boost in diversifying the Dubai’s exchange, the Dubai Financial Market, that is dominated by bank and real estate stocks.
Bin Shafar also said that Empower wants to enter Dubai South, the mega commercial and residential development project surrounding Al Maktoum International at Dubai World Central.
“We are trying to work something with them but it's still in the negotiations stage,” the chief executive said.
