Ageson plans share consolidation, rights issue to raise up to RM179m

KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 19): Ageson Bhd (formerly known as Prinsiptek Corp Bhd) intends to raise up to RM179.09 million — more than three times its market capitalisation of RM55 million — through a share consolidation and a rights issue.

In a bourse filing, the construction and property company said it plans to consolidate every 15 existing shares into one share.

For illustration, based on the company's last transacted market price of 4.5 sen per share on Jan 17, the adjusted reference price would be 67.5 sen, post-consolidation.

Ageson will then carry out a renounceable rights issue of up to 716.35 million new shares on the basis of two rights shares for every one consolidated share, on a date to be determined later.

The issue price will also be announced at a later date. For illustrative purpose, based on the indicative issue price of 25 sen per rights share, the proposed rights issue is expected to raise gross proceeds of up to RM179.09 million.

Of the total proceeds, the group intends to allocate up to RM132.67 million to fund its future property development and construction projects and investments in businesses which are complementary to its existing business.

Up to RM40.99 million will be used for repayment of bank debt, with RM5 million allocated for working capital requirement and RM430,000 for expenses for the corporate exercise.

Prior to this, the group had on November 29, 2021, completed a private placement raising RM13 million to repay the amount due to RHB Bank.

Ageson had in October last year scrapped its proposed rights issue of irredeemable convertible unsecured loan stocks (ICULS) due to the “expected longer time” required for the company to complete the exercise.

The rights issue of up to 12.78 billion ICULS was expected to raise around RM319.55 million, of which Ageson was planning to use RM302.89 million to part-finance a proposed mixed-use development in Perak with an estimated gross development value of RM1.24 billion.

Ageson's share price fell 22.22% or one sen to 3.5 sen, bringing it a market capitalisation of RM55 million.

The stock was among the top 10 actively traded on Bursa Malaysia, as its volume swelled to 62.56 million shares compared with 2.23 million shares on Jan 17.

S Kanagaraju