Hot Stock HB Global rises as much as 25% on speculative trade

by **Cals** Thu 09 Jul 2015, 01:02

Hot Stock
HB Global rises as much as 25% on speculative trade

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By Yimie Yong / theedgemarkets.com | July 8, 2015 : 4:11 PM MYT

KUALA LUMPUR (July 8): [size=14]HB Global Ltd, which was issued an unusual market activity query by Bursa Malaysia yesterday, continued to see active trade today with its share price jumping as much as 25% or 3.5 sen to hit a 19-month high of 17.5 sen before paring gains.

The Practice Note 17 (PN17) company, which told Bursa yesterday evening that it was still investigating the reason for its drastic share price and volume hike recently, was trading unchanged at 14 sen at 3.54pm, with 6.03 million shares done.

The current share price gives it a market capitalisation of RM72.5 million, more than three times its market cap of RM23.4 million it saw just a week ago on July 1, when it was just trading at 5 sen a share.

As comparison, FBM KLCI was down 15.71 points or 0.92% at 1,697.03.

In a reply to Bursa Malaysia yesterday, the gourmet convenient food specialist said that it is not aware of any unannounced corporate development or rumour on the rise of its share price but is still waiting for a reply from the major shareholders.

Alliance Investment Bank remisier Raymond Foo said the share price movement might be due to speculative activities.

“The company has yet to submit its regularisation plan and it is still incurring losses. The recent share price rally is unlikely due to any development that the company would be out from PN17 soon,” he told theedgemarkets.com via phone.

HB Global's financials have weakened according in its first quarter ended March 31, 2015 (1QFY15); its net loss widened to RM11.66 million from a net loss of RM1.08 million a year earlier, while revenue fell 35.7% to RM22.03 million from RM34.24 million.

The company had also announced earlier that its application to Bursa Malaysia for the extension of time to submit its regularisation plan is still pending an approval from Bursa.

The China-based company slipped into PN17 category in May 2013 after its external auditors made an audit disclaimer opinion on the company’s audited financial statements for the financial year ended Dec 31, 2012, noting that it was unable to satisfactorily and independently substantiate the bank balance of a subsidiary company.

(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.)
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