By Sharen Kaur - Published in New Straits Times, May 3, 2021
KUALA LUMPUR: Berjaya Corp Bhd (BCorp) will reveal a major restructuring next month that will involve streamlining its businesses and selling off non-core assets.
Its recently-appointed group chief executive officer Abdul Jalil Abdul Rasheed said there were many businesses under BCorp and come June, there would be changes.
"I am targeting by the end of June, we will announce publicly where we will streamline the group, reorganise certain aspects of the business and share what the future BCorp be like. I have in my mind right now what they should be.
"I think that is important to get the foundation first which is reorganising the business, knowing very clearly what business we want to be in, what businesses we don't want to be in. That's the first starting step and then after that, there will be a sequence of announcements," Jalil said in an interview with the New Straits Times here last week.
BCorp is involved in real estate, leisure, hospitality, retail, food, automotive, and gaming, among others.
For the year ended June 30, 2020, it recorded a net loss of RM117.27 million.
The group posted five years of losses in the past 10 years.
There were some changes recently in BCorp involving its founder Tan Sri Vincent Tan who resigned as executive chairman, in line with his vision to transform the group into an institutionalised corporation managed by professionals.
Tan remains on the BCorp board of directors as non-executive chairman.
Jalil, 38, who previously served as the president and CEO of Permodalan Nasional Bhd, was appointed on March 16 this year with a mandate to transform BCorp into a high-performing organisation.
He is the first non-family-related member to helm Tan's multi-billion ringgit empire.
Jalil also acquired 70 million BCorp shares at 28 sen apiece, giving him a 1.4 per cent stake in the diversified conglomerate, according to a statement by BCorp.
The statement did not disclose the seller but based on a Bursa Malaysia filing by BCorp, Tan had disposed of 70 million shares via a direct business transaction. This leaves him with a direct interest of 25.71 per cent or 2.59 billion shares in BCorp.
Shares in BCorp rose 16.6 per cent, or three sen to 21 sen, its highest since August 2020, following Jalil's appointment.
The share is currently trading in the range of 34 sen. This gives BCorp a market capitalisation of RM1.76 billion.
When asked how his first month at BCorp had been for him, Jalil said he was enjoying it.
"The first three months is a learning and discovery exercise for me to meet all the companies and understand their business operation," he said.
Jalil said he was currently assessing what are the synergies between the various aspects of the businesses under BCorp.
"We are studying what have we done particularly better and what have we done not so good, what are things we can move fairly quickly, and what are things we need to kind of build on in maybe about two to three years. There will be elements of some small operational improvements and there are also some structural things that we will change.
"We will unveil that next month. We will announce how BCorp should look like and that will involve a combination of reorganising the businesses, identifying what is core, what is non-core, and then we will take it from there," he added.
Jalil said divestment would be an important aspect of the plan.
"Next financial year June 30, 2022, you should see all the aspects of the changes that we announced in the current year coming to fruition. That is the whole idea that we want the new year to start off with this new strategic plan for Bcorp and enhance value," he said.
In a statement issued recently, Jalil noted that he and BCorp founder Tan Sri Vincent Tan had agreed that the group was undervalued, given the many good assets that could be optimised.
BCorp is currently trading at a steep discount of more than 80 per cent based on its net tangible assets of RM1.21 per share as at end-December 2020.
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