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The grid stock the rally forgot

UUE Holdings (0310) — The Next Billion Ringgit Stock?

RaymondRates.my5 min read

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UUEUUE HoldingsMNHLDGMN Holdings

Every theme rally leaves someone behind. As the AI-energy trade swept Bursa — rerating anything that touches the grid, from substations to switchgears — , the company that literally drills the tunnels Malaysia’s power cables run through, went… nowhere. Flat for 2026, while its order book quietly hit a record. That gap is the story.

RM536m
Record order book
vs RM479m market cap
2+ yrs
Earnings visibility
TNB & Singapore works
0%
UUE in 2026
MN Holdings: +69%
Price when this was published. UUE closed at RM0.520 on 17 July 2026, the day this article went out. The 52.5 sen used below was the live price while it was being written, not the close. Every level here is measured from that July starting point — tap the UUE chip above for today’s price.

The digger behind the grid

UUE is a horizontal directional drilling (HDD)specialist: it bores under roads and rivers and pulls TNB’s 11kV and 33kV underground cables through, making its own HDPE pipes in-house — vertical integration that protects margin. It earns in two currencies, with a growing Singapore book. The latest quarter showed what that mix can do: 4Q net profit more than doubled year-on-year to RM7.6m, with gross margin expanding to 27.4% on higher Singapore billings.

1 · The order book is the healthiest it has ever been

Outstanding orders stand at a record RM536.4 million— more than the company’s entire market value — after a steady drumbeat of TNB-linked wins. That is over two years of revenue already contracted, with replenishment coming from the same force powering the whole sector: TNB’s multi-year push to upgrade and underground the distribution network.

Order book vs market cap (RM mil)RM416mJun 2025RM536m · recordApr 2026market cap ≈ RM479m
Record book, sub-book valuation: the market is paying less than one ringgit per ringgit of secured work. Sources: The Edge, KLSE Screener.

2 · The AI-energy premium skipped it

Grid contractors became AI stocks in 2026 — data centres need power, power needs cables, and the market rerated the theme aggressively. Direct peer is up ~69% this year. UUE — same customer, same underground niche — is flat, still sitting below its 52-week high. Part of the optics: headline FY2026 profit fell 58% on higher administrative costs, which left a scary ~50× trailing P/E on screens; strip the one-offs and broker estimates put core profit around RM22m — roughly half that multiple, before any growth.

The premium that skipped UUE (2026 YTD)MN Holdings+69%Pekat+9%Southern Cable+0.4%UUEflatYahoo Finance closes, 2 Jan – 16 Jul 2026. Order book at record — share price hasn’t moved.
Same theme, same client, very different 2026. The rerating hasn't reached the drilling layer yet.
Wind turbines on a ridge at dusk overlooking distant mountains
The National Energy Transition Roadmap runs on cables as much as turbines — and most of the new ones go underground. · Photo: Unsplash

3 · The catalysts

  • TNB’s grid supercycle:Malaysia plans roughly RM43 billion of grid investment through 2030 under the energy transition — undergrounding, substations, new feeders. UUE’s bread and butter.
  • Data-centre load: every Johor campus needs high-capacity underground feeds — the same theme that rerated the peers, flowing to the drilling layer next.
  • Singapore scale-up: management is expanding from two HDD teams toward ten, a potential SGD1.0–1.5m of monthly revenue at better margins.
  • Optionality: a push into subsea drilling and electrical systems engineering widens the addressable market beyond distribution cabling.

4 · Risk vs reward: the breakout question

The stock has spent a year building a base: a defended floor at 34.5 sen, a ceiling around the low-60s, and price now mid-range at 52.5 sen. The bull case is simple — a record book plus a theme the market already loves means that above the ~63 sen zone the stock has no history above it: all-time-high territory, where price discovery does the work. The bear case is equally simple: until earnings print through the headline noise, the market keeps paying nothing for the growth.

The setup (sen)price discoveryno overhead supply52w low 34.5~63 breakoutnow 52.5Mid-range with a defined floor: ~20% to the breakout zone, ~34% above the low it defended.
A defined range keeps the risk measurable — that's what makes the reward-to-risk workable. Not a price target.
Respect the risks. This is an ACE Market small-cap: TNB concentration, lumpy contract recognition (an ASEAN cable job already lapsed this year), thin liquidity, and a headline FY26 profit decline that needs a clean quarter or two to disprove. An analysis, not advice — size accordingly.

The bottom line — the billion-ringgit question

With 912 million shares, a RM1 billion market cap is roughly RM1.10 a share — the size of the prize, not a target. Track it beside EI Power on the live heat list — especially if the AI shakeout turns into a rebound.

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