Daewoo E&C’s earnings slid 30 percent in 2012

Daewoo Engineering & Construction said yesterday that its earnings plunged nearly 30 percent last year from a year earlier due to a one-off factor.

Net profit came to 159.3 billion won ($146 million) last year, compared with 226.7 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Sales, however, gained 16.3 percent on-year to reach 8.1 trillion won last year, and operating income also increased 17.4 percent to 365.2 billion won, the company said.

The builder said the on-year drop in net income resulted from a one-time loss of 240 billion won caused by its redevelopment project and other housing related bad debts that were written off due to the local property market slump.

The company received 13.8 trillion worth of orders in 2012, up 4.1 percent from a year earlier.

It said sales could go up by more than 18 percent this year, citing brisk sales of the ownership of new houses over the past two years, and construction of large-scale power plants in North Africa.

Builders used to secure a lot of money when they completed the construction of apartments after they sold the rights to live in those apartments.