KUALA LUMPUR (June 10): Shares in Asia Bioenergy Technologies Berhad surged 25% in afternoon trades today, as trading volume soared.

At 3.17 p.m., the stock was trading at its intra-day peak of 5 sen apiece, after 20.66 million shares exchanged hands. The current price gives it a market capitalisation of RM42.9 million.

It closed at four sen yesterday, with 20.7 million shares traded. In comparison, its 65-day average trading volume across the open market stood at 687,128 shares.

A dealer told theedgemarkets.com that both Asia Bioenergy and VSolar Group Bhd — in which it has a 19.51% stake, according to VSolar's Annual Report 2015 — had hit its all time high in early 2015 and plunged substantially to near their all-time lows earlier this year, before both staged a rebound this month.

This follows VSolar's announcement that it was collaborating with Universiti Teknologi Malaysia to research, develop and commercialise solar and photovoltaic technologies.

Asia Bioenergy emerged as VSolar's substantial shareholder on July 31, 2014, after acquiring 25.62 million shares or 10% stake in VSolar via a private placement. It then raised its stake to 19.51% via multiple purchases until end of December 2014.

At the time of writing, Asia Bioenergy was the 12th most active stock across the exchange, while VSolar was the fourth most active.

Aside from VSolar, Asia Bioenergy also holds investments in several other public-listed companies, particularly in the bio-energy sector, namely Focus Dynamics Technologies Bhd, NetX Holdings Bhd and Carimin Petroleum Bhd.

Last year, Asia Bioenergy and VSolar had on June 15 endorsed a joint collaboration and alliance agreement to jointly develop a cash crop farm on VSolar's photovoltaic energy generation real estate, whereby Asia Bioenergy will be able to use its effective micro-organism products to enhance product yield and growth, said Asia Bioenergy in its Annual Report 2015.

"We believe that in the long term, collaborations like this will bring both direct revenue value to Asia Bioenergy, whilst further enhancing the investment value in VSolar," it added.

It was also exploring other potential projects with NetX and Focus, where a similar collaborative strategy will be employed.