This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 4, 2023 - December 10, 2023

Last week, Serba Dinamik Holdings Bhd, once a stock market darling, said it was unable to release its financial report for the quarter ended Sept 30, 2023, by the prescribed deadline of Nov 30, as required under the Main Market listing requirements of Bursa Malaysia.

This was the fourth straight quarter that Serba Dinamik had failed to release its financial results on time. It gave no reasons, except to say that it is “expecting to issue and submit its quarterly report for the financial period ended Sept 30, 2023, no later than Dec 7”.

Notably, Serba Dinamik had also failed to issue its annual report for FY2023 by the Oct 31 deadline, and had sought to extend the deadline for the submission to Jan 15, 2024, but this was rejected by Bursa Securities.

Then again, Serba Dinamik’s stock has been suspended from trading since Jan 18 this year, and the company has been classified as a cash-strapped Practice Note 17 (PN17) company since January 2022, after its external auditors Nexia SSY PLT expressed a disclaimer of opinion on the company’s audited financial statements for the 18-month financial period ended June 30, 2021.

These issues in releasing its quarterly results and annual report came after the Securities Commission Malaysia in April 2020 compounded Serba Dinamik’s top brass — its managing director and CEO Datuk Mohd Abdul Karim Abdullah, as well as three other top executives — a total of RM16 million for submitting false statements involving revenue of a whopping RM6.01 billion for FY2020, previously flagged by the company’s external auditor, KPMG.

Many investors were burnt by the false statements of Serba Dinamk’s management.

What will happen next is anyone’s guess, but Serba Dinamik and its management should not be let off the hook the easy way, for instance, via a delisting of the company. Rather, the management should be brought to book for not adhering to Bursa Malaysia’s rules.

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