KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 12): MSCI maintained the constituents of its main country index for Malaysia while deleting seven stocks from its small-cap index following its latest review.

AEON Credit Service (M) Bhd (KL:AEONCR), AirAsia Group Bhd (KL:AAGB), KSL Holdings Bhd (KL:KSL), Mah Sing Group Bhd (KL:MAHSING), Matrix Concepts Holdings Bhd (KL:MATRIX), Syarikat Takaful Malaysia Keluarga (KL:TAKAFUL), and Zetrix AI Bhd (KL:ZETRIX) will be struck off the small-cap index.

NationGate Holdings Bhd (KL:NATGATE), meanwhile, is the sole addition to the small-cap index.

The indices are closely watched by fund managers and foreign investors. An exclusion from the indices can trigger outflows as passive investors sell the former constituent in their portfolios to mirror the benchmarks.

MSCI indices are rebalanced every three months on the final trading day of the quarter. MSCI will add or remove stocks based on specific criteria, such as size and liquidity, to ensure the indices stay relevant as benchmarks of the markets they represent.

Year to date, Aeon Credit declined more than 20% amid worries over the consumer financing firm’s bad debts while AirAsia Group plunged 70% amid high jet fuel prices. Zetrix AI — under scrutiny from investors, bondholders, authorities, regulators, and the government — lost over 90% of its value.

NationGate, an electronics manufacturing services firm, has more than doubled its stock price as investors piled into suppliers of hardware for data centres powering artificial intelligence.

All changes to the MSCI indices will be effective at the close of Nov 30, 2025, the index provider said. The next review has been scheduled for Feb 9, 2027.

Malaysia currently has 21 constituents that cover about 85% of the country’s equity universe in MSCI’s standard index designed to measure the performance of the large- and mid-cap stocks. The small-cap index, meanwhile, has 64 stocks that make up about 14% of the Malaysian stock market.