KUALA LUMPUR (March 24): Yinson Holdings Bhd (KL:YINSON) rose on Tuesday following news report of a group of shareholders nearing an agreement to take the oil and gas firm private.
Shares of Yinson rose by as much as six sen or nearly 3% to RM2.35, breaking a four-day losing streak. The stock closed at RM2.31 after more than nine million shares changed hands. At the last price, the company had a market capitalisation of RM7.43 billion.
Yinson is currently undervalued by investors, trading at around seven times its enterprise value, below its peers’ average of about 10 times, according to analysts.
Current valuations are “attractive” for the parties privatising Yinson, said Ben Shane Lim, head of research at New Paradigm Securities, which does not cover the stock.
Yinson has been trading at depressed valuations over the years, partly due to the environmental-social-governance discount on the broader oil and gas sector, he noted. “Without some sort of external catalyst,” he said, “it will be tough for Yinson to realise better valuations in public markets.”
The Lim family, which established Yinson in the 1980s and is its biggest shareholder, plans to team up with infrastructure-focused investment firm Stonepeak Partners and some local pension funds that are existing shareholders in Yinson on a joint bid, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Talks are at an advanced stage and a deal may be announced as soon as the next couple of weeks, Bloomberg reported citing unidentified people with knowledge of the matter.
Representatives of the Lim family and Stonepeak declined to comment to Bloomberg. Yinson did not respond to The Edge’s request for comment sent through its external public relations agency.
The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) holds 18% in Yinson while Retirement Funds Inc (KWAP) has 7%, according to its 2025 annual report. Executive chairman Lim Han Weng and his family own over 25% in Yinson.
If the pension funds are on board, the deal will likely secure enough support from the rest of minority shareholders for the transaction to go through, another analyst who covers Yinson told The Edge.
The group of shareholders plan to privatise Yinson through a scheme of arrangement, a court-approved process involving a company and its shareholders, to boost the chances of the deal succeeding, Bloomberg reported.
Still, deliberations are ongoing and there’s no certainty that the deal will materialise, the financial newswire added. Bloomberg had reported in June last year that Stonepeak was teaming up with the Lim family for a buyout of Yinson.
As at the end of the financial year ended Jan 31, 2026, Yinson was in a net debt position of RM13.49 billion, with bank borrowings of RM18.02 billion exceeding cash and cash equivalents of RM4.53 billion.
Data from AskEdge shows Yinson currently trading at a price-earnings (P/E) ratio of 9.8 times, which is higher than several of its peers. In comparison, Uzma Bhd (KL:UZMA) trades at 4.2 times, Perdana Petroleum Bhd (KL:PERDANA) at 6.6 times, and Vantris Energy Bhd (KL:VANTRG) at 0.2 times. Meanwhile, Dayang Enterprise Holdings Bhd (KL:DAYANG) trades at 10.1 times, Velesto Energy Bhd (KL:VELESTO) at 13.4 times, and Dialog Group Bhd (KL:DIALOG) at 20.1 times.