Short selling of Dayang suspended after shares slide

KUALA LUMPUR: The short selling activities of Dayang Enterprise Holdings Bhd was suspended at 10.08am on Thursday after the share price fell more than 15 sen or 15% following the release of its results.

At 10.13am, it was down 16.5 sen to 96.5 sen with 20.62 million shares done.

The FBMKLCI was down 6.76 points or 0.42% to 1,596.98. Turnover was 759.86 million shares valued at RM431.09mil. The broader market was weaker with decliners beating advancers 448 to 128 while 257 counters were unchanged.

Dayang had voluntarily suspended the trading from 9am to 10am to release its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2019.

It shares fell just after it started trading and Bursa Securities suspended the short selling for the rest of Thursday.

Earlier, Dayang reported it managed to reduce its net losses in the first quarter ended March 31, 2019 as work orders picked up and it expects to perform better with an order book of nearly RM3bil and firm oil prices.

Its net losses were RM4.13mil compared with RM21.30mil a year ago. Revenue rose by 0.5% to RM156.41mil from RM148.78mil. Loss per share were 0.43 sen compared with 2.21 sen.

The oil and gas support services company said loss before tax narrowed to RM8.50mil versus RM36mil a year ago.

“The increase in revenue and improved loss before tax in the current quarter is mainly due to higher work orders received and performed under the topside maintenance contracts,” it said.

Source: TheStar