KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 28): HARPS Holdings Bhd, a Malaysian-based manufacturer and global distributor of nitrile examination gloves, announced that it has decided not to proceed with its proposed initial public offering (IPO) and listing on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia Securities Bhd due to unfavourable market conditions.

The proposed IPO, involving the offering of a total of 2.6 billion shares via institutional and retail offerings, was expected to take place by end-2021, it said in a statement on Thursday.

“After taking into consideration the feedback from the investor engagement process, in particular broad-based investor sentiments and hesitancy over the Malaysian glove sector coupled with the outlook of the Malaysian glove sector from the time we first submitted our IPO application to the regulators, we have made this very difficult decision not to proceed with the proposed listing despite obtaining the approval from the Securities Commission on June 21, 2021.

“After careful consideration of the interests of all our stakeholders and various discussions with our shareholders, board of directors, principal adviser and joint global coordinators, we believe that this is the most appropriate decision for HARPS at this juncture,” HARPS’ founder, managing director and chief executive officer Haziq Zairel Oh said in the statement.

“We continue to maintain a positive outlook on HARPS’ future and are focused on steering HARPS to be a market leader in the glove sector. We will continue to push ahead with our growth plans, which include increasing our total annual installed capacity to 19.5 billion gloves by end-2023.

“HARPS will continue to uphold its Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) framework and has set in place a sustainability roadmap to ensure we are aligned internally with our sustainability goals as well as to deliver on our commitment of maintaining our ESG principles to the highest standards,” he noted.