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

Every theme rally leaves someone behind. As the AI-energy trade swept Bursa — rerating anything that touches the grid, from substations to switchgears — UUE Holdings (0310), 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.

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.

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 MN Holdings 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.

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 bottom line — the billion-ringgit question

The maths behind the title is simple: with 912 million shares, a RM1 billion market cap works out to roughly RM1.10 a share — about double today’s 52.5 sen. That’s not a target, it’s the size of the prize if the two gaps in this story close: earnings catching up to a record book, and the market catching up to the theme. Either they do — or the discount persists for a reason. Watch the low-60s. It joins EI Poweron our list of Bursa’s quiet energy-infrastructure plays, and you can track it daily on the live heat list — especially if the AI shakeout turns into the rebound we expect.

Sources & further reading

• KLSE Screener — UUE’s RM536m order book offers two-year earnings visibility
• The Edge — 4Q sales jump; annual net profit dragged by higher administrative costs
• The Edge — RM83m of new contracts pushed the order book to a then-record RM416m
• Business Today — UUE still well positioned despite lapse in ASEAN cable works
• The Malaysian Reserve — Malaysia’s ~RM43b grid investment through 2030
• UUE Holdings — company site (HDD & underground utilities engineering)