KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 29): Bumi Armada Bhd fell as much as five sen or 7% after the oil and gas support services firm announced a wider quarterly net loss from a year earlier.

Last Friday (Aug 26), Bumi Armada said it recorded a net loss of RM518.32 million in the second quarter ended June 30, 2016 (2QFY16) from a net loss of RM291.53 million. 1HFY16 net loss also widened to RM494.89 million versus RM219.48 million a year earlier.

At 10:43am today, Bumi Armada shares fell to 72.5 sen for a market value of RM4.5 billion. The fourth most-active stock on Bursa Malaysia saw some 15 million shares changed hands.

Public Investment Bank Bank upgraded Bumi Armada despite its net loss.

In a note today, Public Investment analyst Mabel Tan said the research firm upgraded Bumi Armada shares to "outperform" with an unchanged target price (TP) of 90 sen.

Tan said this was premised on anticipation of earnings from floating gas solutions (FGS) and floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) operations.

"We are however upgrading our recommendation on BAB (Bumi Armada) to Outperform with an unchanged TP of RM0.90 derived by our DCF (discounted cash flow) approach, as earnings growth catalyst from the 4 major FPSO & FGS contributions are expected in 2017 as all the projects' first oil/gas estimated delivery or sail away are by end-2016," she said.