Bina Puri – Keep asking for money but where has the value gone?

Bina Puri had its IPO in November 1994. Based on IPO price of RM2.80/share, it carried a market value of RM112m. It has been about 22 years since its listing. However, its current market cap is below the value of the group during IPO time (based on IPO offer price).

Let’s not forget after IPO, Bina Puri has raised a total of RM150.4m from rights issue (RM40m), private placement (RM93.3m) and ESOS (RM17.1m). This has not taken into consideration that the group had capitalised RM20m of debt in 2009.

And last Friday, Bina Puri proposed a private placement of not more than 10% of enlarged share capital of the group. Again?

The company has been profitable since 2000. But why is it still stucked as a micro cap company? Furthermore, the total proceeds raised over the years after IPO alone (RM150.4m, excluding RM20m debt capitalisation) were already greater than its current market cap, even after deducting total dividend paid out since 2003!(historical records of dividend payout before 1999 were not available at Bursa website)

Despite it has been profitable since 2000, it had to carry out capital reduction (from par value per share of RM1 to RM0.50) in 2014 in order to new shares as the share price then was way below RM1. As highlighted above, the IPO offer price was RM2.80/share. What has gone wrong?

Is this company too undervalued that investors failed to appreciate the assets owned by the group and its earnings potential or is it something not right within the company that caused value destruction to the minority shareholders? Something for existing shareholders of Bina Puri and potential investors to look further into.

UPDATE: The group's cash and cash equivalents as of end June 2016 was RM-11.4m (negative cash!)

You may be interested to find out previous writing about Bina Puri: Is Bina Puri Cheap?