This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on March 10, 2016.

Key Asic Bhd (-ve)

SHARES of Key Asic Bhd (Asic) (Fundamental: 1.55/3, Valuation: 0/3) closed lower by 2.44% to 20 sen yesterday, with 15.92 million shares traded. In comparison, its 200-days average volume was about 1.78 million.

Asic’s shares have been on the uptrend since the beginning of this year, jumping by 42.86% even after the drop yesterday.

There was no significant development recently, save for its 4QFY15 earnings announcement on Feb 26.

For the quarter, Asic registered a net loss of RM2 million compared with a net loss of RM19.92 million a year ago.

The group saw a better financial year in 2015 (FY15), but still suffered a net loss of RM13.92 million. This was a big improvement compared to a net loss of RM34.25 million for full year financial year 2014.

The group also saw its revenue for FY15 increase by 13.18% to RM19.29 million compared to RM17.05 million a year ago.

To recap, the company has been making losses from 2010 to 2014.

Asic is aiming for a turnaround, pinning hope on its two new products, K-Drive and K-card. K-Card has already been launched as planned and is currently selling through authorized distributors and online channels. K-Drive’s launching was postponed to the first quarter in 2016. K-Drive is essentially a portable Wi-Fi personal backup device while K-Card is an in-house brand that turns non Wi-Fi devices into Wi-Fi enabled devices.

According to its filing with Bursa Malaysia, Asic said the success of the two products is very much dependent on the awareness of the public on its versatile usage on which the group is currently working on.

The management is also working on action plans to address the pressure on its cash flow as a result of lower-than-expected revenue and the launching of the product.