KUALA LUMPUR: Solar photovoltaic (PV) and earthing and lightning protection (ELP) specialist Pekat Group Bhd made a very strong debut on the ACE Market on Wednesday and surged to a high of 93 sen in early trade.

It opened at 86 sen, which was 54 sen above its offer price of 32 sen.

At 9.07am, it was trading at 75 sen, up 43 sen. There were 83 million shares done at prices ranging from 71 sen to 93 sen.

The FBM KLCI was down 1.79 points or 0.13% to 1, 571.93. Turnover was 386.32 million shares valued at RM196.22mil. There were 176 gainers, 179 losers and 305 counters unchanged.

Its offer of 32.20 million new shares were oversubscribed by 76 times after a total of 34, 963 applications for 2.5 billion shares was received from the public when it was open for subscription from June 2 to 10.

The Bumiputra portion of shares was oversubscribed by 44 times after 13, 168 applications for 725.5 million shares were received.

At the 32 sen a share IPO price, it raised RM44.4mil from the public issue of 138.7mil shares, mainly for the construction of a new head office and working capital.

Pekat Group managing director Chin Soo Mau said the company is expected to benefit from the favourable government initiatives, financial incentives and tax breaks for the solar PV industry, and rebound in the construction sector, driven by the resumption of activities across all subsectors.

“Government policies and incentives will act as growth catalysts in the Malaysian solar PV industry at different end-user segments like residential, commercial and industrial.

“Current incentives and tax breaks such as the Green Technology Financing Scheme and the Green Investment Tax Allowance by MIDA will continued to spur further development in the solar PV industry.

“Pekat should benefit from various solar PV programmes such as the latest rooftop solar initiative by the Energy and Natural Resources Ministry – Net Energy Metering (NEM) 3.0 programme, which will be in effect from 2021 to 2023 with a quota of 500 MW allocated to further boost the uptake of solar adoption for residential, commercial and industrial users, ” he added.

Speaking to reporters after the company’s virtual listing, Chin said with the proceeds from its successful listing exercise, Pekat is pushing ahead to expand its solar PV and ELP business.