KUALA LUMPUR: Based on corporate announcements and news flow last Friday, the following stocks may garner interest today: Palm oil counters, Sunway Bhd, ML Global Bhd, Supermax Corp Bhd, Perwaja Holdings Bhd and Kinsteel Bhd.

Stocks that have exposure to palm oil such as Sime Darby Bhd, United Plantation Bhd, PPB Oil Palm Bhd and Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd may garner interest as the Malaysian Palm Oil Board is set to release the official figures on the Malaysian palm oil inventory today.

Three-month (January 2015) crude palm oil benchmark futures last Friday settled at RM2,195 per tonne.

Sunway is believed to have hired three more banks to work on the listing of its construction arm, which could raise up to US$200 million (RM669 million).

ML Global’s subsidiary, Vintage Tiles Industries Sdn Bhd, has secured a commercial real estate construction contract worth RM35.9 million from property developer LBS Bina Group Bhd. LBS owns 20.45% of ML Global which told the bourse last Friday that it would undertake building and infrastructure works for LBS’ shop office project in Kuantan, Pahang.

Supermax Corp reported a 22.33% decline in net profit to RM27.8 million for the third financial quarter ended Sept 30, 2014 (3QFY14) from RM35.8 million a year ago, due to foreign exchange losses totalling RM5.9 million.

Revenue also fell 2.2% to RM278.38 million, mainly due to lower sales volume. For the nine months period, the rubber glove maker posted a net profit of RM81.17 million, 21.71% lower than RM103.69 million a year ago.

Perwaja, which is 37%-owned by Kinsteel, said its audited net loss for the 18 months ended June 30, 2014 (FY14) stood at RM1.21 billion — a 32% or RM295.85 million variation compared with its unaudited amount of RM921.6 million, due to impairment of plant and machinery (RM233.57 million), impairment of receivables (RM58.94 million), and other adjustments (RM3.35 million).

Kinsteel’s audited results for FY14 also showed a 30% variation from its unaudited version. Its audited net loss stood at RM546.81 million, a variance of RM125.32 million from its unaudited number of RM421.49 million reported in late August, which it said was due to impairment on inventories, plant and machineries in subsidiary (RM15.1 million and RM87.21 million respectively), and overstatement of inventories (RM23 million).

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on November 10, 2014.