KUALA LUMPUR (May 29): IOI Corp Bhd fell as much as 11 sen or 2.72% after it was excluded from the Securities Commission (SC) latest Shariah-compliant list. IOI Corp (fundamental: 1.2; valuation: 1.1) was in the regulator’s list in November last year.

At 12.30pm, IOI Corp pared some losses and was traded at RM4.01, down 4 sen or 0.99%, with 5.74 million shares done.

As comparison, FBM KLCI was down 3.11 points to 1,752.45.

An investment manager told theedgemarkets.com that the share price movement of IOI Corp would not be tremendous as IOI Corp was trending down earlier when there is news saying that the counter will be excluded from the Shariah-compliant list.

“Its share price has started trending down earlier when there is news of IOI Corp’s possible exit. The current share price has somehow taken into account of this development,” he said via phone.

According to Public Investment Bank Bhd’s note today, it said IOI Corp is the “most obvious casualty” this time round, though that has largely been anticipated by the investment community.

“The recent de-merger and spinoff of IOI Properties has left its total asset base a little short, disqualifying the company on the financial benchmark testing,” it added.

In a strategy note dated May 20, AffinHwang Capital Research said IOI Corp could possibly lose its Syariah-compliance status in the SC’s semi-annual review.

Meanwhile, the SC said in a statement yesterday that its updated list had 674 Shariah-compliant companies. These counters made up 75% of the 903 firms listed on Bursa Malaysia.  

The updated list is effective today, according to the SC.

The SC said the list included 19 newly-classified Shariah-compliant entities and excluded 13 from the previous list issued in November 2014.

(Note: 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.)