KUALA LUMPUR: Sedania Innovator Bhd has inked an underwriting agreement with Kenanga Investment Bank Bhd for its upcoming initial public offering (IPO) on the ACE Market of Bursa Malaysia, slated to be by the middle of this year.

In a statement yesterday, the home-grown mobile services enabler said it is eyeing to accelerate its growth pace with the upcoming IPO.

Sedania has cemented its presence in the local technology-oriented circle since 2014 after it partnered a mobile network operator (MNO) to provide ancillary mobile services to its subscribers, principally airtime sharing (ATS) solutions.

ATS allows mobile subscribers to request and transfer airtime credits to other prepaid mobile subscribers within the same network.

Founded by Datuk Noor Azrin Mohd Noor, Sedania Innovator’s platform is made available to subscribers of Celcom Axiata Bhd and Maxis Bhd in Malaysia, as well as Robi Axiata Ltd in Bangladesh.

The ATS services provided through the platform include “Celcom Airtime Transfer”, “Celcom Airtime Request” and “Maxis 2 Transfer” in Malaysia, and “Quickshare” in Bangladesh.

Noor Azrin, also the managing director of Sedania Innovator, said the company’s proprietary developed ATS platform had proven to be highly robust and scalable, facilitating up to 400,000 transactions daily at its peak.

This has allowed Sedania Innovator to expand internationally.

“We intend to hone our competitive edge even further. In fact, we hope to raise funds from our IPO for research and development (R&D) and to enhance our ATS platform, and also target to expand our R&D team to 40-strong from 18 persons at end-2014. We are confident that this would propel our next growth trajectory,” he added.

Sedania’s IPO entails the public issue of 51.5 million new shares, of which 41.5 million shares will be allocated for private placement to selected investors, one million shares for eligible directors and employees of the group, and nine million shares for application by way of balloting to the Malaysian public.

Sedania’s wholly-owned subsidiary IDOTTV Sdn Bhd is the owner of the company’s in-house developed mobile technology platform.

Noor Azrin said Sedania had recently launched three new ATS-related services in the first quarter of 2015 alone.

For the financial years (FY) ended Dec 31, 2011 to 2013, Sedania posted a net profit compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 61.1% per year to RM6.9 million from RM2.7 million in FY11. Revenue CAGR stood at 6.6% per year over the same period to reach RM9.9 million in FY13 from RM8.7 million in FY11.

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on April 30, 2015.