Ekuinas yet to finalise plans for ILMU

PETALING JAYA: Ekuiti Nasional Bhd (Ekuinas), which announced three acquisitions worth RM363.2 million yesterday, has yet to finalise its plans for its education arm Ilmu Education Group Sdn Bhd (ILMU).
"Any plans to divest ILMU will only be finalised once Ekuinas believes that the value of the investment has been optimised," Ekuinas said in an email response to SunBiz.
"Similar to global private equity firms and as mentioned last year, Ekuinas is open to divestment through listing or strategic sale exercise at the appropriate market environment and continues to work towards achieving this crystallisation exercise."
Back in April 2014, the firm's former CEO Datuk Abdul Rahman Ahmad said it would list ILMU in 2015. Later in March last year, the firm said the listing would likely be at end-2015 or early 2016.
However, in September last year, Ekuinas said that its listing plans would take another six to 12 months (March-September 2016) to materialise, due to less favourable market conditions.
The government-linked private equity fund management company said that any divestment plan that it undertakes must maximise value and meet its financial as well as social objectives.
On whether it would acquire more assets to be injected into ILMU, Ekuinas said its focus is on strengthening ILMU's operations and profitability across all its tertiary institutions and schools.
"The group aims to continue growing its range of offerings, including exploring future expansion opportunities into pre-school and vocational education," it said.
In a statement issued yesterday, Ekuinas said that ILMU, which is acquiring the remaining 49% stake in APIIT Education Group, has also acquired the remaining stakes in Unitar International University (Unitar) and Tenby Schools.
The firm acquired the remaining 10% stake in Unitar Capital Sdn Bhd, the owner and operator of Unitar, at RM13 million from minority shareholder Shoraka Square Ltd. The acquisition was made in December 2015.
In February this year, it acquired the remaining 30% stake in Tenby Schools for RM35.2 million from its founder and director Datuk Lim Si Boon, who will remain as executive director of the company.
On Wednesday, Sapura Resources Bhd announced the proposed disposal of its entire 49% stake in APIIT Education Group to ILMU for RM247 million. After the disposals, APIIT will declare dividends to its shareholders whereby ILMU and Sapura will be entitled to dividends of RM70.78 million and RM68 million respectively.
The RM68 million dividend will be paid in cash by Ekuinas, bringing its total investment in APIIT Education Group to RM315 million.
Ekuinas chairman Raja Tan Sri Arshad Raja Tun Uda said that education is one of Ekuinas' core sectors for investment and constitutes nearly 27% of its investment portfolio to date.
Meanwhile, Ekuinas CEO Syed Yasir Arafat Syed Abd Kadir said the investments in APIIT, Unitar and Tenby Schools will strengthen Ekuinas' position in the education sector, consistent with its strategy to position ILMU as one of the largest private education providers in Malaysia.
Part of the strategy, he said, involves intensifying student acquisition and marketing initiatives, implementing process improvement initiatives, and installing new and improved management systems, which are currently at various stages of implementation.
ILMU is an integrated multi brand education provider with six institutions locally and one in Sri Lanka namely APU, Unitar, Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan University College, Cosmopoint College, APIIT Sri Lanka, Tenby Schools and APS.
With these buy-outs, Ekuinas has undertaken 45 investments to date for a total of RM2.8 billion under its Direct Investments and Outsourced Programme.
Through these investments and together with capital from private sector partners, Ekuinas has facilitated economic deployment of more than RM3.4 billion.