This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on March 21, 2019

KUALA LUMPUR: Bermaz Auto Bhd (BAuto) expects its total sales volume to stay flat for financial year 2020 (FY20) ending April 30, 2020 at about 16,000 units.

Its chief executive officer Datuk Francis Lee (pic) said this is mainly due to the fact that unlike in FY19, there will be no tax holiday that will attract more buyers.

Lee said BAuto’s total sales volume for calendar year 2018 was 16,000 units, and the company is expecting the figure to be the same for 2019.

In terms of dividend, given the stellar performance seen in the first nine months of FY19, Lee said the payout will be “decent”.

“We have the option to invest in plants or pay more dividend, but that will depend on the board’s decision,” said Lee, when asked if shareholders could expect a higher dividend.

For the nine-month period, BAuto’s net profit grew 147.6% to RM205.21 million or 17.68 sen per share, compared with RM82.88 million or 7.19 sen per share a year in the same period of FY18. Revenue rose 37.37% to RM1.95 billion from RM1.42 billion.

Moving forward, Lee said BAuto is hopeful of government support as the company will be concentrating on the completely knocked down market in the Malaysian market.

“We also want to do more exports from Malaysia to the Asean region. We have been the biggest exporter of cars in Malaysia for the last three years,” said Lee.

He added that sales within the country remain good despite the implementation of the sales and service tax (SST).

“We still get the bookings since the SST implementation. We are not going for big volumes; we are going for decent volumes to generate enough profitability for our stakeholders,” he said.