Why SCOMI among the most active ?

New shareholders to surface in Scomi Group?

Scomi Group Bhd was among the most active counters on Bursa Malaysia yesterday, with some 24.8 million shares changing hands.


Market talk has it that there could be new substantial shareholders in the form of Indonesian investors and Middle Eastern funds surfacing in the company quite soon.

The new shareholders, according to sources, have been accumulating Scomi Group shares on the open market for sometime now and are close to surfacing in the company.

Details, however, were not available at press time.

The new substantial shareholders could have been accumulating shares sold by Datuk Kamaluddin Abdullah, a substantial shareholder of Scomi Group. Kamaluddin, it appears, is close to reducing his shareholding to below the 5% substantial-shareholder level.

Kaspadu Sdn Bhd, the vehicle of Kamaluddin and his partner Shah Hakim @ Shahzanim Zain, has been disposing of shares on the open market.

However The Edge Financial Daily understands that Shah Hakim is not exiting the company and will remain with Scomi.

As at end-May, Kaspadu had 178.52 million shares or 15.44% equity interest in Scomi Group.

By comparison, in April last year, Kaspadu and its unit Onstream Marine Sdn Bhd had a stake that was nearly twice as large, with an interest of 34.23%, or 345.33 million shares. However in September 2009, Kaspadu commenced selling small blocks of shares on the open market.

What Kamaluddin has planned is not clear.

There has been talk of friction between the two, but this has been dismissed. The duo ventured into Scomi Group back in 2000, when Kaspadu acquired Subang Commercial Omnibus & Motor Industries Sdn Bhd, now better known as Scomi. Scomi’s flotation exercise in 2003 was perfectly timed as oil and gas stocks were in favour due to skyrocketing crude oil prices.

For its 1HFY2010, Scomi Group posted a net profit of RM17.19 million on the back of RM888.56 million in revenue. The company’s 2Q results were weak, as Scomi mustered a net profit of only M3.62 million from RM429.30 million in revenue.

Net profit for 2Q was RM3.6 million, a drop of 83% from RM20.9 million in the corresponding quarter last year.

Scomi Group said that, “operationally, the decrease was mainly attributable to lower revenue achieved by the transport solutions division and cost revisions resulting in an increase in the estimated costs to completion and reduction in the attributable profit of the monorail project”.

Scomi Group has two publicly traded units, Scomi Engineering Bhd, where it has 69.31% equity interest and Scomi Marine Bhd in which it has 42.71% stake. Scomi Engineering has its mainstay in developing monorail systems and has a strong presence in India and is looking to penetrate Brazil, among others. Scomi Marine, meanwhile, operates barges and has off shore support vessels.

Despite the heavy volume yesterday, Scomi Group closed unchanged at 41.5 sen. Scomi Engineering ended trading at RM1.05, gaining four sen while Scomi Marine inched up three sen to 53 sen.