Opus eyes Stock Exchange listing

Deborah Hill Cone

Friday 30th January 2004

A fast-growing $150 million infrastructure company which emerged out of what was once the shabby old Ministry of Works yesterday revealed its long-term plans for a Stock Exchange listing.

Opus International is the engineering consultancy spun off as Works Consultancy from the Ministry of Works in 1988. It was privatised in 1996 and is now wholly owned by Kuala Lumpur-listed project management company Kinta Kellas.

But now the business is booming there may be an opportunity for New Zealanders to buy back part of the thriving consultancy, which has offices in Australia, the UK and Malaysia and has just acquired a Canadian company, Geoplan.

For a start, an employee share and option plan (Esop) kicks in with its largest tranche due to mature in 2007 when management and staff will get the chance to buy back 25% of the company.

The company's board includes former National government minister Philip Burdon, Government Superannuation Fund chairman Basil Logan and lawyer Daniel Stevenson.

Opus chief executive Kevin Thompson would not reveal the price of the options but said they were so far "in the money," with the market price above the exercise price.

Staff would also have to raise capital to do the deal, Dr Thompson said.

In addition to the staff share plan, Kinta Kellas was also investigating a Stock Exchange listing on the NZX in the next couple of years.

"It would be a proportion of what the shareholder wanted to release  it's seen as a way of adding value," Dr Thompson said.

A listing would offer mum and dad investors a chance to buy back into the profitable company, which has nabbed high-profile contracts around the world such as work on redeveloping London Under-
ground's Picadilly Line.

"There probably isn't a family in New Zealand that hasn't been touched by the Ministry of Works in some way," Dr Thompson said.

Opus also worked on the structural and civil design and business services for Auckland's Britomart Transport Centre and is engaged on the two biggest Auckland roading projects, the Eastern Corridor and the Upper Harbour corridor.

Dr Thompson said the company had just acquired Geoplan Consultants, a 20-staff firm which has offices in New Brunswick, British Columbia and Ontario.

The purchase was a natural progression for Opus, which is already doing extensive work in the Canadian market, Dr Thompson said.

One of the reasons the consultancy had been able to pick up so much international work was the uniquely New Zealand way of building roads, which had a low capital cost upfront but an asset management plan, which meant the roads were still cheaper over their whole life.

Opus was awarded the Trade New Zealand services exporter of the year in 2002 after boosting annual exports from $9.5 million in 1999 to $28.8 million in 2001.

Dr Thompson said the consultancy's latest accounts, not yet released, showed it had turned over $150 million the year to the end of December 2003.

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