Indonesia's Semen Gresik Q4 profit jumps 87 pct

By Harry Suhartono and Nury Sybli

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's largest cement firm, PT Semen Gresik Tbk SMGR.JK, posted results on Monday indicating a better-than-expected 87 percent rise in fourth-quarter net profit, boosted by a building boom and more efficient operations.

Southeast Asia's biggest economy has seen a push by authorities to increase investment on ageing infrastructure and the firm expects the country's domestic cement demand to grow 6-7 percent this year.

"Our sales this year will be largely inline with the overall industry, hopefully we can reach 7 percent sales growth assuming (more) infrastructure projects will kick off and consumer purchasing power increases," President Director Dwi Soetjipto said.

The company is targeting a market share of 46 percent this year, up from 44.3 percent last year.

State-owned Semen Gresik's net profit rose to 503.5 billion rupiah ($54.85 million) rupiah in October-December from 268.7 billion rupiah a year ago, according to Reuters calculations based on its full year earnings released on Monday and nine-month results.

Analysts had predicted a full-year net profit of 1.65 trillion rupiah, implying a fourth quarter net profit of 378.7 billion rupiah.

Gresik's revenue climbed 11.8 percent in the quarter to 2.51 trillion rupiah, as its sales volume for the period climbed 35 percent to 3.9 million tonnes, outpacing a 6.1 percent rise in national consumption.

Analysts polled by Reuters Estimates forecast that the company, which has a market capitalisation of $2.97 billion, will book revenue of 10.8 trillion rupiah ($1.18 billion) in 2008, around 12 percent higher than last year.