KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 30): Prestariang Bhd, which is suing the government for terminating the National Immigration Control Systems (SKIN) project, posted a second straight quarterly loss for the April-June 2019 period, mainly due to the provision for impairment on trade receivables, development costs, fixed assets in the education segment.

The group recorded a net loss of RM17.44 million for April-June 2019 against a net profit of RM529,000 a year ago. As a result, it posted a loss per share of 3.6 sen for April-June 2019 compared with 0.11 sen for April-June 2018.

Revenue for the three-month period, however, more than doubled to RM121.98 million from RM55.92 million a year ago, due to reinstatement of the SKIN project’s revenue of RM78.1 million as a result of the adoption of MFRS15.

The weak quarterly performance saw the group's net loss for the 18-month financial year ended June 30, 2019 (18MFY19) widen to RM21.27 million compared with RM2.2 million a year ago.

This was despite seeing its revenue for 18MFY19 jump 2.6 times to RM367.32 million from RM141.45 million in 18MFY19.

The group has changed its financial year end from Dec 31 to June 30. Accordingly, the just-ended financial year covered an 18-month period from Jan 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019.

On prospects for the new financial year ending June 30, 2020 (FY20), Prestariang foresees its performance to remain challenging.

"However, the management is confident that we will be able to achieve financial stability and accelerate business growth," it said in a bourse filing today.

Prestariang said the software and services and academy business continue to grow and is operationally profitable to the group, with on-going sustainable key projects at hand including MLA 3.0, Autodesk and Adobe.

With regards to the originating summons against the government where Prestariang is claiming RM733 million in relation to the termination of the SKIN project by expropriation, the group remains positive on the compensation amount based on the formula stipulated under the concession agreement.

"The management is confident that there will be no impairment to the period under review," it added.

At 3.40pm, Prestariang shares were down 2.5 sen or 5.49% at 43 sen, with 6.79 million shares done, bringing it a market capitalisation of RM208.12 million. The counter saw some 4.55million shares transacted.