Friday 29 Mar 2024
By
main news image

KUALA LUMPUR: IT solutions and fingerprint verification products provider PUC Founder (MSC) Bhd, which is diversifying into the provision of energy services, is bidding for more renewable energy (RE) quota from the Sustainable Energy Development Authority (Seda) next year.

Cheong Chia Chieh, managing director of the Bursa Malaysia ACE Market-listed company, said PUC Founder will be bidding for the 50-megawatt (mw) quota made available by Seda next year. It may also purchase quota unutilised by other parties.

“How much we bid [for] will depend on how much we are able to get from the irredeemable convertible unsecured loan stocks (Iculs) scheme,” he told digitaledge DAILY after an investor briefing yesterday.

“The major shareholders have committed to invest RM40 million in the company, which is enough to build [a] 4mw power plant,” he said.

He added that if the Iculs scheme — which was announced last Tuesday— is fully subscribed, PUC Founder would be able to raise up to RM106 million to build power plants with up to 15mw in capacity.

Besides solar power, Cheong said the company is also looking to explore other RE businesses, such as biogas.

Currently, the company has a 1mw solar photovoltaic plant in Sungai Petani, Kedah, which is expected to generate RM1 million per year over a period of 21 years. The revenue contribution is expected to come on stream in the first quarter of next year.

To recap, PUC Founder’s subsidiary MaxGreen Energy Sdn Bhd in March received the feed-in-tariff approval from Seda to develop and operate the company’s estimated RM8 million 1mw solar power plant.

The company later signed a power purchase agreement with Tenaga Nasional Bhd in June to sell electricity generated at the plant to the utility giant for 21 years at RM1.0355 per kilowatt-hour.

Meanwhile, Cheong told the digitaledge DAILY there would be another corporate exercise to unlock the value of PUC Founder’s technology business in the near term, but declined to elaborate.

Cheong said the financial performance of the company for the financial year ending Dec 31, 2015,  would be “favourable” despite the weaker financial results reported for the first quarter, as it expects income from its new engineering, procurement and commissioning business for power plants. It has also divested some of its biometrics businesses.

PUC Founder (fundamental: 1.85; valuation: 1.7) shares closed one sen or 9.09% lower at 11 sen yesterday, with a market capitalisation of RM106.58 million.

PUC-founder-chong_ded_130815_thedegemarkets


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. Go to www.theedgemarkets.com for details on a company’s financial dashboard.

 

This article first appeared in digitaledge Daily, on August 13, 2015.

      Print
      Text Size
      Share