UPDATE 1-India's L&T to delay software unit listing-chairman
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NEW DELHI, June 12 (Reuters) - Larsen & Toubro (LART.BO), India's top engineering firm, will defer listing its software unit to 2009/10, as the division has not reached a revenue target and market conditions are unfavourable, its chairman said.
The unit, L&T Infotech, was to have its initial public offering in the second half of 2008/09, the first of three divisions L&T plans to list over three years.
But L&T Infotech had not reached a revenue threshold of $500 million, Chairman A.M. Naik told reporters on Thursday.
Naik was optimistic his firm would maintain a revenue growth of 25-30 percent in the year to March 2009, despite selling its ready-mix concrete division to France's Lafarge (LAFP.PA) in May, and a slowing of the Indian economy.
"We are not changing that (outlook)," Naik said.
L&T was betting on power projects and overseas revenue as a growth driver, and these would weather any slowdown, he said. L&T has outlined plans to build 5,000 MW of capacity in the next five years, with the first plant to be commissioned in 2013.
Revenues from outside India, which made up 16 percent of L&T's 2007/08 net sales of 292 billion ($6.8 billion), could go up to to 25 percent, Naik added, without giving a timeframe. ($1=42.8 rupees) (Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy, Editing by Mark Williams)
