PETALING JAYA: Manufacturing automation solutions provider aims to raise RM39.09 million from its initial public offering (IPO) in conjunction with its listing on the ACE Market of Bursa Malaysia on July 17.
The IPO entails a public issue of 244.3 million new ordinary shares in i-Stone and an offer for sale of 122.1 million existing shares by way of private placement to selected investors in i-Stone at an issue price of 16 sen per share.
According to its Bursa filing, the majority of the proceeds totalling RM13.48 (34.5%) million will be used to repay its borrowings, followed by RM6.8 million (17.4%) allocated for the construction of a new design and development centre that is expected to be completed within 48 months of the listing.
The remaining proceeds will be utilised for the group’s process and product development (RM4.2 million or 10.7%), capital expenditure (RM5.2 million or 13.3%), working capital requirement (RM5.9 million or 15.1%) while RM3.5 million or 9.0% will be used to defray listing expenses.
The new design and development centre will be located at its existing operations centre in Taman Teknologi in Johor, where the group has centralised all its manufacturing operations since last October.
“In line with our growth plans, we will also acquire new and advanced machinery such as CNC and CMM to increase our fabrication capacity. We will also design, develop and manufacture standard modules to be used in our testers and machines with the aim in reducing manufacturing lead time. We also intend to develop new products and introduce new features into our machines to meet our customers' increasing demands for higher productivity and efficiency of their manufacturing operations,” said i-Stone managing director Rebecca Tee Sook Sing.
“Finally, we will hire more EE, Mechanical, Software and Automation engineers to execute these new plans. We strongly believe that with these future plans, we are able to provide better automation solutions and development of new products to meet our existing and new customers’ demand for higher productivity and efficiency,” she said at the launch of the prospectus today.
The offer of 244.3 million shares represents 20% of the company’s enlarged number of issue shares with 61.07 million units earmarked for public investors, 12.22 million shares for its eligible directors and employees, 122.15 million to identified bumiputra investors while the remaining 48.86 million will be offered via private placement to selected investors.
For the listing exercise, the group has engaged M&A Securities Sdn Bhd as its adviser, sponsor, underwriter and placement agent.
