KUALA LUMPUR (May 3): Maybank Investment Bank Bhd (Maybank IB) has issued eight new call warrants over shares of companies in the oil and gas, construction, property and industrials sectors.

They are Dialog Group Bhd, Gamuda Bhd, IJM Corp Bhd, Malaysian Resources Corp Bhd, Mega First Corp Bhd, Sunway Bhd, UEM Sunrise Bhd and YTL Corp Bhd.

The European style cash-settled call warrants were listed today, with an issue size of 100 million each. The tenure for the eight call warrants is 11 months.

The issuance is  on the back of Maybank IB Research's expectation that the recent news of the resumption of works to develop the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) will be positive for the construction sector.

"With about 40% of the project expected to be awarded to Malaysian contractors, the revised structure of the ECRL implies RM17.6 billion of works to be available, compared with RM10 billion under the previous structure.

"This represents considerable order book replenishment opportunities for the sector, with experienced contractors in rail development emerging as the potential main beneficiaries," said Maybank IB Research.

Additionally, the resumption of the ECRL along with further progress in works for the Klang Valley MRT 2 project, are expected to stimulate a broad-based demand recovery in the second half of 2019 for the building materials sector over the projects’ construction period, the research firm noted.

"Amid this market backdrop, there may be pockets of opportunities for investors to trade on newsflow and thematics," added Maybank IB Research.