This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on August 4, 2025 - August 10, 2025

THESE are early days for what could be a new and substantial stream of income for Infomina Bhd (KL:INFOM), an information technology solutions company, as it moves into the artificial intelligence (AI) space.

In an exclusive interview at Infomina’s headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, its CEO and managing director Yee Chee Meng tells The Edge that the company’s niche advantage is its exposure to and engagement with C-suite executives and enterprise architects, enabling the group to work with key customers, including banks, on data transformation and modernisation amid the “digital rush” during the pandemic.

“That was how we got into data [bulk processing and integration], in which we work with supercomputers to process and integrate data, making it usable for various applications,” Yee says.

He adds that the company’s unique position allows it to understand and contextualise data for specific business applications, giving Infomina an edge in meeting its clients’ business needs.

To this end, Infomina in August launched AiMod, an AI-enabled self-serve data analytics and modelling solution featuring a virtual AI assistant built on an agentic AI data analytics platform. Simply put, the product functions as a “bespoke, enterprise-grade version of ChatGPT”.

“Think of software as an implementer that follows fixed rules written by humans, whereas AI learns patterns from data and can make decisions, adapt or improve over time. Not every action is hard-coded — it can figure out answers on its own, making it a special kind of software that can learn, reason or make decisions — often using large amounts of data. It also has predictive capabilities,” says Yee.

Yee shares that Infomina has already clinched two customer contracts for AiMod: a financial company and a government-linked agency.

“The interest from our pre-launch has generated significant opportunity, marking the demand and readiness of the market towards our products,” says Yee.

Infomina, which was listed on the ACE Market of Bursa Malaysia on Nov 25, 2022, and raised RM32.47 million at an issue price of 40 sen per share, has two main business segments — technology infrastructure operations; maintenance and support services; and technology infrastructure solutions, which contributed 85.7% and 14.3%, respectively, to the group’s revenue for the fourth quarter ended May 31, 2025.

“People have always looked at AI as a chatbot only. People think they can dump all their data into it, and the software magically churns out a good business outcome. But it is the granular details to put all this together so that the [software] works for you. It is a very specialised domain that needs to be worked on and localised,” Yee stresses.

“The challenges with external AI products are that many are inflexible and require additional costs for changes, creating a dependency on the AI company. Instead, what Infomina aims to do is to provide transparency and flexibility in AI solutions, allowing customers to own and manage their AI models as we provide open-source, customisable solutions. This is what AiMod enables.”

As for Infomina’s strategy for engaging with customers on AI projects, Yee explains that with the new product, Infomina offers software solutions that enable small teams to make changes and manage AI models independently. The company’s approach is to provide a hybrid model, combining the external AI solution with the group’s in-house solution. 

Yee, who first worked as a freelance IT consultant for the group between 2010 and 2017, was named managing director in 2017 and appointed to the board the following year.

He is the largest shareholder of Infomina with a 61.9% stake. Privately held Infomina Holdings Sdn Bhd has 55.4% equity interest in the listed company Infomina.

Infomina Holdings is 33.65% held by Mohd Hoshairy Alias, 33.65% by Nasimah Mohd Zain, 20.29% by Yee, 8.43% by Raymond Lim Leong Pin and 3.98% by Tan Siang Pin. Mohd Hoshairy, Nasimah and Lim are executive directors of Infomina, while Tan is the chief sales officer.

Explaining how Infomina grew from a revenue of RM58 million per annum prior to Covid-19 to more than RM200 million in revenue within several years, Yee shares: “We managed to get authorisation from Broadcom in the US, with whom we got licensed to become the exclusive partner for the whole of Asia. That enabled us to enter [penetrate] almost all countries in Asia including North Asia, Japan, China and Hong Kong, leading us to a [breadth] of direct customers, with whom we have quite sizeable contracts.”

Over the past five financial years, Infomina’s revenue has risen from RM81.62 million in FY2020 to RM225.16 million in FY2024, representing a compound annual growth rate of 27.8%.

It is noteworthy, however, that the group saw its net profit dwindling since the second quarter of FY2025 (2QFY2025). The group booked its first quarterly loss since its listing nearly three years ago, with a net loss of RM3.14 million during 4QFY2025 ended May 31, which it attributed to a one-off RM10 million provision for doubtful debts related to a customer in the Philippines.

According to a July 25 report by Berjaya Research Sdn Bhd, the group’s total outstanding claim from the Philippine customer amounts to RM133 million, comprising RM91 million in invoiced amounts and RM42 million in late payment interest as at July 23, 2024.

“The group has engaged legal advisers to pursue a solution regarding the outstanding receivables, although a definitive timeline for recovery remains uncertain. A favourable outcome could allow the group to recover the full total outstanding claim amounts, potentially resulting in a one-off gain of RM67 million (including the RM10 million provision for doubtful debt). However, in a worst-case scenario where the customer defaults entirely, the group may be required to write off the remaining balance of the receivables,” says the research house.

The IT services provider’s revenue also dropped to RM53.44 million in the quarter. Its filing with Bursa Malaysia on Wednesday showed a decline of 8.7% from RM58.53 million in 4QFY2024, when it made a net profit of RM8.05 million.

“The renewals business has always been the more lucrative division because these are existing contracts while turnkey implementations always involve higher risks and completing the project for the customer. These two segments work hand in hand. So the new AI-driven data centre will potentially give us a third business segment,” says Yee.

When asked about the new segment’s potential contribution to revenue, he declines to comment but assures that the prospects are “promising and should pan out in the next two years or so”.

He adds that there will be various categories or subsegments that will be structured within the new business unit including data sales, professional services and licensing.

Bloomberg data shows that two of the three analysts covering the counter have “buy” calls, while one has a “hold” call, with a consensus target price (TP) of RM1.42.

“Infomina’s current order book stands at RM289 million, comprising 18% in the turnkey segment and 82% in the renewal segment. [Its] tender book stands at RM839 million with a balanced mix of 48% turnkey and 52% renewal. We anticipate margin expansion in FY2026, supported by existing contracts in the renewal segment, potential renewals from key clients in Thailand and the Philippines, which may also benefit from incremental pricing and capacity upgrades and ongoing renewal activity across other overseas markets,” says Berjaya Research Sdn Bhd, which has a “buy” on the stock with a TP of RM1.42.

Year to date, shares of Infomina sank 50.36% to 68.5 sen apiece on May 22 but rose to the RM1.13 level last Wednesday to value the company at RM679.41 million.

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