KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 12): Dataprep Holdings Bhd (KL:DATAPRP) has proposed a share capital reduction to wipe out up to RM100 million of the company’s accumulated losses, followed by a private placement involving up to 30% of its issued shares to raise RM30.2 million to fund project expenditures, raise working capital and repay its borrowings.

The information technology service provider’s accumulated losses as at Sept 30, 2024 stood at RM99.71 million at the group level, and RM86.78 million at the company level, which it plans to reduce to a loss of RM463,000 (group level) and a retained profit of RM12.47 (company level), following the capital reduction.

The company has also proposed placement, which could involve the issuance of up to 226.7 million shares to third-party investors to be identified. It expects to fix the issue price of the placement shares, which could be issued by tranches, separately.

Based on its illustrative issue price of 13.3 sen per placement share, Dataprep could raise as much as RM30.2 million from the exercise, of which RM15 million will be used for project expenditures, RM10 million for working capital and RM4.4 million to repay bank borrowings.

In FY2024, Dataprep reported a net loss of RM12.29 million compared to a net loss of RM23.29 million in FY2023, while its revenue fell 46.6% to RM16.87 million in FY2024 from RM31.64 million.

The company has been loss making for the past nine financial years.

The proposals, subject to approvals from Bursa Malaysia and the company’s shareholders, are expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2025.

Shamshuri Abdul Majid is the largest shareholder of Dataprep holding 13.64% stake, followed by Widad Business Group Sdn Bhd with 3.71% stake and Siti Munajat Ghazali with 2.27% stake.

Shamshuri first emerged as the substantial shareholder of Dataprep on July 10, after acquiring 5.16% or 38.16 million shares in the company.

Shares of Dataprep closed half a sen or 3.3% higher at 15.5 sen on Thursday, giving it a market capitalisation of RM117.13 million.

Uploaded by Felyx Teoh