Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (May 6): Shares in FGV Holdings Bhd spiked to a month's high of 97.5 sen in active trade at noon today, up 11.5 sen or 13.37% from yesterday's closing price of 86 sen.

The stock was the sixth most active counter on Bursa Malaysia with 88.73 million shares exchanging hands, valuing the company at RM3.54 billion.

FGV shares hit an intraday high of 99 sen apiece, despite news of Malaysian palm oil futures plunging below a nine-month low yesterday.

This was on the back of expanding palm oil inventories for April that likely rose 10% from March to their highest since December 2019, according to a Reuters poll. The poll also predicted that production rose 15% from the month before, while exports increased 4%.

At the time of writing, the benchmark palm oil contract for July delivery on the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange was traded at RM1,975 per tonne, its lowest closing price since July 19, 2019.

However, on a brighter note, the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) said that India might turn to Malaysia to start importing back the vegetable oil, especially if the Covid-19 pandemic gets worse in Indonesia and forces the neighbouring country into a total lockdown.

FGV, whose crude palm oil (CPO) production fell 30% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, has generally been on a downtrend since January, having lost 37.5% in value year to date.

Last Thursday, its chairman Datuk Wira Azhar Abdul Hamid in a letter to shareholders said the group expects its CPO production to chart "a significant improvement" in the second quarter of this year, as the impact of historically poor weather abates.

The group's CPO production stood at 514,000 metric tonnes (MT) in 1Q2020, compared with 1Q2019's 762,000 MT, as fresh fruit production declined to 712,000 MT from 1,055,000 MT previously.

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