Quick take: Pentamaster tumbles 20%, short selling suspended

KUALA LUMPUR: Shares of Pentamaster Corp Bhd tumbled 20.2% to a low of RM3.74 in active trade on Friday and Bursa Malaysia suspended the short-selling activities.

It fell 95 sen to a low of RM3.74 making it the top loser on Bursa Malaysia.

Bursa said short selling was suspended for the rest of the day as the last done price dropped more than 15% from the reference price of RM4.69. The short selling will only resume on Monday at 08.30am.

At 10.23am, it was trading at RM4.36, down 33 sen, with 66.48 million shares done. The call warrants Penta-CF lost eight sen to 21 sen with 36.14 million units traded.

The FBM KLCI lost 2.52 points or 0.16% to 1,581.25. Turnover was 780.27 million shares valued at RM556.64mil. There were 176 gainers, 440 losers and 279 counters unchanged.

Pentamaster was classified as Shariah non-compliant and there could have been an over-reaction to the exclusion.

Last week, Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (KWAP) disposed 60,000 shares in Pentamaster in the open market. The fund has a direct stake of 3.11% in Pentamaster and indirect stake of 2.58%.

Earlier, Pentamaster announced that its net profit grew to RM21.48mil in the third quarter ended Sept 30,2019, from RM17.11mil a year ago.

Quarterly revenue was up 15.08% at RM124.63mil against RM108.3mil previously.

For the first nine-month period, its net profit increased 58.27% to RM60.59mil from RM38.28mil last year, while revenue grew 17.47% to RM364.13mil from RM309.98mil.

Source: TheStar