KUALA LUMPUR (Mar 16):  State-controlled utility Tenaga Nasional Bhd has further increased its stake in Integrax Bhd at prices below its offer for remaining shares in the latter.

In a filing with Bursa Malaysia today, port operator Integrax (fundamental: 1.65; valuation: 1.2) said Tenaga (fundamental: 1.3; valuation: 1.8) had acquired 1,600 Integrax shares at RM3.17 each last Friday (Mar 13).

Tenaga had earlier revised upward its take-over offer price for Integrax to RM3.25 a share from RM2.75 previously.

The offer price was raised to RM3.25 after major Integrax shareholders argued that the initial offer was not high enough.  

On Mar 4 this year, Integrax directors, however, advised minority shareholders to reject Tenaga's revised offer.

Integrax's board said the underlying value of Integrax shares at RM3.60 to RM3.66 each was still higher than Tenaga's revised offer of RM3.25.

As at last Wednesday (Mar 11), Tenaga had raised its Integrax stake to 23.05%. This followed the acquisition of 10,800 Integrax shares on that day.

Tenaga had paid RM3.17 for each Integrax unit then, Integrax told Bursa Malaysia.

Today, Integrax shares fell one sen or 0.3% at 12:30pm to settle at RM3.17 for a market capitalisation of RM953.6 million.

This compares to Integrax's latest reported book value of RM2.13.

(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company’s profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)