Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on September 21, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: K-Star Sports Ltd saw a 24.98% stake or 95.15 million of its shares traded off-market yesterday, at a three sen per share premium to its last price in the open market.

Bloomberg data showed the transactions were done via 11 tranches, at 14 sen per share or an aggregate sum of RM13.32 million. Five of the transactions were larger blocks of more than 10 million shares each.

At the time of writing, no public announcements have been made on parties involved in the transactions.

Nonetheless, it is worth noting that K-Star’s executive chairman, Ding Jianping, has been paring down his stake in the group since March, which he held via private vehicle Avenue Portal Sdn Bhd.

As at April 30, Ding held a 18.59% stake in the company, down from 23.09% as at March 30.

Apart from Ding, one other substantial shareholder of K-Star is Datin Tan Siew Ching (18.5%), who is also chairperson and executive director of ACE Market-listed JAG Bhd, a firm providing total waste management solutions. K-Star, registered as a foreign company in Malaysia, made its debut on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia in June 2010.

According to its official website, its manufacturing hub in Jinjiang City in China’s Fujian province boasts an annual aggregate production output of some 7.9 million pairs of sports footwear.

Its products are mostly distributed across China and exported to overseas markets such as Russia.

However, K-Star has been loss-making for the past six financial years, beginning from the financial year ended Dec 31, 2012.

For the second quarter ended June 30, 2018, the group returned to the black with a cumulative net profit of RM721,000, against a revenue of RM91.59 million. In August, it also completed a capital reduction exercise to give rise to a credit of 204.8 million yuan (RM123.68 million), to set-off its accumulated losses.

The sports footwear maker, in notes accompanying its financial statements, said it expects the group’s prospects for the current financial year to be favourable, but still cautioned of “limited upside momentum” to sales growth.

K-Star’s share price slid half a sen or 4.35% to close at 11 sen yesterday, for a market capitalisation of RM41.90 million.

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