SHAH ALAM (Oct 17): The world's largest rubber glove manufacturer Top Glove Corp Bhd is likely to announce a new acquisition within the next month, to boost the company' growth momentum.

"We are very active now, [and] we are very hungry for M&As. But we must look for the right food (right company) to eat, we cannot simply eat.

"We are very close to closing a deal, we will announce it (the acquisition) within one month. We're almost at the end. Wait for our good news," Top Glove chairman Tan Sri Dr Lim Wee Chai told reporters during a briefing of the group's fourth financial quarter results today.

Additionally, Lim said the group is aiming to grow its market share to 30% by 2020 from 25% currently.

"As we announced earlier, [securing] 30% of the market share through organic growth is too slow, so we need to go through M&A. We're always looking for areas to improve in terms of sales, capacity and profit," he said.

Unwilling to divulge more, Lim only said the acquisition target is "interesting and good" for Top Glove.

On May 22, Kenanga Research reported that Top Glove under its wholly-owned GMP Medicare Sdn Bhd has announced the acquisition of two plants or rubber glove assets, a factory each in Seremban and Muar, Johor, for RM39 million in total, which will give the group greater access to China.

Meanwhile, on its organic expansion plans, the group is in the midst of constructing two new manufacturing facilities, namely Factory 31 which is targeted to be operational by March 2018, and Factory 32, which is set to commence by December 2018.

Lim said on completion of the two facilities, Top Glove's total production lines will grow 78 lines to 628 lines, while production capacity will increase by 7.8 billion pieces of gloves per annum to 59.7 billion.

As for its new condom business, Lim said the group has already started the preparations for its condom manufacturing facility, which is expected to be operational in 2018.

"We have already identified the factory, [and are] now renovating and restoring the machines.

"For the initial stage, we will have two production lines, which we will increase to 10 production lines. Hopefully, within two years, we will have 20 production lines," he said.

The group has invested about RM75 million in its condom business as it seeks to maintain the group's growth momentum via diversification.

On Friday, the group announced its net profit jumped 51% to RM98.62 million in the fourth financial quarter ended Aug 31, 2017 (4QFY17) from RM65.32 million a year ago, as revenue climbed 25% to RM902.42 million from RM722.11 million.

It declared a final dividend of 8.5 sen a share for the financial year ended Aug 31, 2017 (FY17).

Its annual net profit, however, fell to RM332.7 million in FY17 from RM360.73 million. This was despite revenue rising 18% to RM3.41 billion from RM2.89 billion, boosted by a 7% increase in sales volume.

At 3.42pm, Top Glove shares dropped two sen or 0.31% to RM6.37 with 4.21 million shares traded, for a market capitalisation of RM8 billion.