This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on September 15, 2017 - September 21, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: Microlink Solutions Bhd is looking to raise revenue contribution from its financial services segment to 25%-30% — from 10%-15% currently — of its total revenue for the financial year ending March 31, 2018.

Having secured a project with Lembaga Pembiayaan Perumahan Sektor Awam (LPPSA), executive director Gerard Monteiro (pic) believes the company is on a healthy and steady stream of income that will set Microlink up for a more profitable year.

“We won the deal recently with LPPSA, which [will] contribute positively to our results in this coming year.

“Going forward, the [project] pipeline is very healthy. We are in the advance stages of some tenders and we have taken part in some other [projects] as well, which are in their infancy,” he told reporters after the group’s annual general meeting yesterday.

In June, Microlink secured the RM38 million LPPSA project for the implementation of a loan management system that will take 16 months, followed by maintenance and support for three years.

In its first financial quarter ended June 30, 2017 (1QFY18), Microlink’s net profit jumped over 33 times from RM142,000 in 1QFY17 to RM4.79 million, mainly due to higher revenue contribution from its financial services segment.

The segment’s revenue grew RM14.59 million, mainly due to higher revenue recognition from new projects secured in the quarter under review.

As at June 30, Microlink’s order book stood at RM130 million, and the company is looking to realise half of that in FY18. Monteiro said the company’s tender book is now about five times its order book value.

Within its enterprise solutions segment, which it started about 12 months ago, Microlink is looking to provide cloud solutions, Internet of things (IoT) solutions and smart city services. In this space, Monteiro said Microlink has secured a deal with Aspen Group to be involved in a smart city development in Penang.

Although it is venturing into the relatively new space of IoT, Monteiro said the group has the knowledge and the experts who understand the industries its clients operate in, which gives it the advantage in developing the best solutions for them.