KUALA LUMPUR (June 6): KESM Industries Bhd extended its gains after the sharp rise it experienced last Friday (June 3). It gained 5.8% to touch its five-month high of RM5.09 earlier today, the highest since Jan 28's RM5.10.

The normally sleepy counter gained considerable interest after announcing its third quarter earnings had quadrupled from the year before.

At 3.47pm, KESM Industries, a specialised electronics manufacturing industry player focusing on burn-in services, saw its share price rise 13 sen or 2.7% to RM4.94, after 453,300 shares were exchanged.

Last Thursday (June 2), the company announced that net profit for its third quarter of ended April 30, 2016 (3QFY16) was RM7.57 million, while revenue was RM70.77 million, compared with the previous corresponding quarter's net profit of RM1.73 million, on a turnover of RM62.93 million.

It said the better earnings basically came from higher sales and lower depreciation as certain machinery and test equipment were fully depreciated. However, these were offset by higher foreign exchange loss that came from a stronger ringgit against the US dollar.

For the cumulative period (9MFY16), KESM Industries' net profit came to RM22.64 million, or 52.6 sen a share, which was 244.04% higher than the previous corresponding quarter's RM6.58 million, or 15.3 sen a share. Revenue, meanwhile, was up by 8.77% to RM211.21 million.

The day after the earnings announcement (June 3), KESM Industries' counter shot up 74 sen or 18.18% to close at RM4.81.

The share price hike in the past two trading days notwithstanding, its last traded price of RM4.95 was still 4.07% lower than its closing price of RM5.16 on Dec 31, 2015.

At its current price, Bloomberg data showed its trailing 12-month price-earnings ratio is at 6.44 times.