SINGAPORE (March 21): Maybank Investment Bank Bhd (Maybank IB) said the FBM KLCI may breach the 1,800-point level by end of this year on foreign buying of Malaysian shares.

Maybank IB chief executive officer Datuk John Chong said foreign demand for Malaysian shares was based on fundamentals as investors saw value in the country's equities market.

"Year to date, foreign investors recorded a net buy of RM3.1 billion in the Malaysian equity market. This is driven by the fundamentals. There is a lot of upside in Malaysia and the region. People are seeing value; I don't think this is hot money.

"I do not discount the possibility that it (KLCI) would hit the 1,800-point target faster, because there is a renewed interest in the Malaysian equity market. In fact, not just Malaysia, momentum in Southeast Asia [has] picked up (in the) last three months," Chong said.

At Bursa Malaysia today, the KLCI rose 2.97 points to 1,752.38 points at 2:34pm.

Chong was speaking at a press conference today in conjunction with the two-day Invest ASEAN 2017: Singapore event. The event ends tomorrow.

Today, Chong said Maybank IB has a "healthy" pipeline of fundraising deals this year. He said some 30% of the deals were deferred from last year.

According to him, while the remaining 70% of the deals were new entities, he did not discount the possibility that a portion of the new deals would be postpone till next year.

"I cannot tell you exactly what these deals are, but they are from all sides of the primary and secondary markets. They are driven by trade recovery, higher commodity prices and improved global electronics demand.

"We are in the equity market, and we see there are a lot of fundraising demand for infrastructure projects. We also see opportunities in places like Vietnam and Indochina region, where the governments are working on some privatisation of their SOE (state-owned entity), so there may be some project financing opportunities," he said.