This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on May 9, 2017

Omesti Bhd (+ve)

SHARES in Omesti Bhd (fundamental: 0.95/3, valuation: 0.9/3), formerly known as Formis Resources Bhd, closed six sen or 11.54% higher at 58 sen yesterday, after 4.87 million shares were traded, compared with the average 222,494 shares seen in the past 200 days.

The IT software and hardware distributor, which also provides customised systems integration of hardware platforms, saw its net profit climb 147% to RM815,000 in the third quarter ended Dec 31, 2016, from RM330,000 a year ago.

It attributed the improved earnings mainly to higher revenue and gross profit margin across the business performance services and trading and distribution services segments. Revenue grew 12% to RM125.81 million from RM112.69 million.

This narrowed its net loss for the nine months ended Dec 31, 2016, to RM8.47 million versus RM12.08 million a year ago, while revenue grew 9% to RM325.32 million from RM299.68 million.

At the current share price, Omesti is trading at 0.86 times its book value.