KUALA LUMPUR (Mar 17): PUC Founder (MSC) Bhd rose as much as 12.5% after the firm announced its planned solar energy business venture with state-controlled utility Tenaga Nasional Bhd.

PUC Founder (fundamental: 2.25; valuation: 1.8) rose as much as two sen to 18 sen before paring gains.

At 10.11am, the stock was traded at 17.5 sen with some 49.63 million shares changing hands, making the stock the second most actively traded counter across the exchange.

At the current share price, PUC Founder has a market capitalisation of RM180.7 million.

Yesterday, the company said it was venturing into the solar energy business to bring in a steady revenue stream for the diversified group.

The venture will involve the supply of electricity to Tenaga (fundamental: 1.3; valuation: 1.8).

PUC Founder group managing director Cheong Chia Chieh said its subsidiary MaxGreen Energy Sdn Bhd (MGE) was selected as a feed-in-tariff (FiT) approval holder by the Sustainable Energy Development Authority Malaysia (SEDA).

"Once awarded as a FiT approval holder, we will proceed to sign the agreement with TNB (Tenaga) upon fulfilling the conditions imposed by SEDA and TNB. We will be supplying power to TNB, which is a sustainable source of income for the company," Cheong said.

PUC Founder's existing businesses include fingerprint-verification products  and IT solutions for electronic publishing.

(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company's profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)