BANGI Feb 11 - Ingress Corporation Bhd, a manufacturer of automotive components, expects to focus more on its businesses with Perodua and its plant in Thailand to boost its financial performance.

Ingress receives contracts worth about RM65 million from Perodua, RM2.5 million from Proton and about RM100 million for the manufacturing plant in Thailand per annum, executive vice chairman, Rameli Musa, said.

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If Perodua comes out with a new model, Ingress would secure another contract worth at least RM40 million, he told reporters after the company's Extraordinary General Meering (EGM) here Wednesday.

Moving forward, he said Perodua and the manufacturing plant in Thailand was expected to contribute more for the company's profit compared with Proton.

"We will still have business with Proton but its contribution to our profit is going to be less because we were doing door sash (Waja and Wira models) for them, but for their new model (Gen.2) Proton is using stamp doors," he said.

Rameli said for Waja and Wira models, the component parts that Ingress produced were worth between RM140 and RM150 per unit but for Gen.2 it was only RM31 per unit.

As for Perodua cars, he said the component parts were worth RM700 per unit.

Besides the national cars, the company also produces various component parts for foreign cars like Honda, Mazda and Mitsubishi. These components parts are manufactured in Malaysia, Thailand as well as at Ingress' new plant in Indonesia.

Rameli also disclosed that the company had recently approached Nissan and Toyota for business and expected to continue to look out for more partners to enhance its business.

Asked on the company's performance for the financial year ended Jan 31, 2004, he said the pre-tax profit was expected to be less than that of the previous year. A lot of people had postponed their plans to buy cars and took a "wait and see attitude", he said.

For the nine months ended Oct 31 2003, Ingress registered a lower pre-tax profit of RM14.061 million compared with RM27.95 million seen in the corresponding period of the previous financial year.

As for the financial year ended Jan 31 2003, Ingress also posted a lower pre-tax profit of RM33.735 million compared with RM37.22 million in 2002.

"There were a lot of uncertainties in the domestic car market towards the end of the financial year. If the domestic car (especially Proton and Perodua) sales volume drop, we are affected as well," he said.