KUALA LUMPUR: Manforce Group Bhd, which debuted on the Leading Entrepreneur Accelerator Platform (LEAP) Market of Bursa Malaysia Securities Bhd today, closed its first day of trading with a 5 sen or 27.8% premium at 23 sen with 925,000 shares changing hands.
This gives the company a market capitalisation of RM73.6 million.
Manforce offers workforce solutions and services in Malaysia, with its business activities principally involved in the provision of foreign workers management services, manual labour services as well as foreign workers insurance products and services.
Manforce managing director Datuk Paul Wong Boon Ming said it has raised RM8.6 million through the private placement at an issue price of 18 sen per placement share.
About 87.3% or RM7.5 million of the proceeds raised from the initial public offering (IPO) will be utilised for working capital and the balance 12.7% or RM1.1 million will be used to defray the estimated listing expenses.
“Our board of directors and management team will provide our commitment in growing the company. The first step in doing so is by hiring and/or managing up to 1,800 additional foreign workers, and we hope to complete this within 24 months. The industry we are in is a volume game and there is always a mismatch between the supply and demand. We intend to grow our market share further by addressing the mismatch through our existing and upcoming business strategies,” Wong added.
Besides that, the company intends to diversify its customer market segments, by penetrating into construction, automotive and semiconductor segments, from the current focus on electrical and electronics and plastic manufacturing as well as the services sectors. There are also plans to enhance the company’s service offerings by improving workers’ service quality and through continuous development of the IT infrastructure as well as expansion of support team.
