Daewoo Engineering & Construction, a leading South Korean builder, achieved a better-than-expected 95.7 billion won ($92.9 million) in net earnings in the first half of this year, an 18 percent increase from the same period a year ago, the company said on Friday.

Daewoo logged 222.5 billion won in operating profit and 4.53 trillion won in revenue, up 2.2 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively, from the same period last year.

Daewoo officials attributed the net profit increase in the first half to growing housing and high-rise construction orders at home.

“We made a bold decision to actively put houses up for presale despite the stagnant property market, which helped pull up the company’s growth for the first six months,” a company official said.

The builder made 1.1 trillion won in revenue in its housing and architecture segment, up 20.4 percent on-year and about 53.4 percent of the company’s total revenue in the first half.

Regarding overseas orders, Daewoo won major construction orders such as the $3.4 billion Clean Fuels Project in Kuwait, a $910 million highway construction project in Qatar and a $352 million contract to build part of a subway line in Singapore.

The company said it gained some 3.1 trillion won from overseas projects, which amounts to more than half of all contracts it won in the first half of the year.

Meanwhile, the builder posted 2.5 trillion won in sales for the second quarter, an 8.7 percent increase from the same period last year. However, its operating profit in the April-June period fell 4.89 percent to 103 billion won from the same period a year ago.

By Suk Gee-hyun (monicasuk@heraldcorp.com)