Johannesburg — MURRAY & Roberts yesterday masked its dismay at announcing an expected fall in earnings in the six months to December by assuring shareholders of a robust order book and said that its international business was showing signs of life after being knocked down by the effects of the global recession.

The group yesterday said while overall market conditions had changed little since its last shareholder update given last month, the international operations were experiencing stronger market activity than was evident locally.

The group had an order book of R42bn as at the end of last month, made up of both local and international projects.

After suffering from a spate of contract cancellations, mainly by cash-strapped customers in the Middle East, Murray & Roberts had been forced to divert attention to the local market, where it has been eyeing an even bigger slice of the government's multi- billion-rand infrastructure spend.

But yesterday, the construction group said that it had noticed improvement in its international operations. This appears to be largely from the positive effect of the recovery of the global economy, which analysts said was slowly responding to stimuli being implemented to deal with the devastation caused by the global recession.

"While there has been little change in market conditions overall, the group's international operations are experiencing more robust activity than is evident in SA," Murray & Roberts said.

"It is expected that revenue and operating profit for the first half-year to December 31 will be 10%-20% lower than the previous comparable period and that diluted headline earnings per share and diluted earnings per share will be between 15% and 20% lower than the previous comparable period."