ISDN

ISDN: (The Edge) Shares in the once-dull engineering firm have sprung to life as it raises funds from the market to build power plants in Myanmar and Indonesia, and to pursue other new businesses. Recall ISDN’s share price rocketed recently after the grp announced 2 placement tranches in March and April respectively. ISDN new businesses include the construction and operation of power plants, coal mining and high tech farming. Most of the money ISDN is raising from its share placement will be used to finance its new business ventures, notably grp has inked a non-binding agreement with Tun Thwin Mining to explore opportunities in developing and running a coal fired power plant in Myanmar, which will be the largest coal powered plant in Myanmar. As it happens, ISDN is exploring opportunities in Indonesia, with the firm recently taking a controlling stake in an entity set up by Msia power plant builder Prisma Karun, which is building a hydropower plant in Indonesia. Banks that ISDN has spoken with so far are mostly supportive of its ventures, as the Indo govt is willing to back investors as electricity dd in the country is huge. Grp’s game plan saw a boost recently, after China Huadian Engineering (which has total assets of ~$66b) agreed to work with ISDN on energy projects in Asean. On the outlook of ISDN’s core business, grp is more hopeful, citing that this yr should be promising for the Chinese economy as a new govt has just taken over and grp is seeing a lot of projects being revived. Investors in the meantime are more likely to be concerned abt the co’s progress with its new venture, particularly the power generation business in Myanmar.