National airline begins journey to recovery
KUCHING: Malaysian Airline System Bhd (MAS) has ended its trading on the Main Market at 26.5 sen with 70.915 million lots changing hands, making it the most actively traded stock yesterday.
MAS opened at 26.5 sen against 27 sen registered at Thursday’s close. According to a filing on Thursday, MAS had announced that its counter will be suspended at December 15, 2014, to execute the company’s selective capital reduction and repayment exercise (SCR).
In a filing on December 4, 2014, MAS had announced, “Under the SCR, the ordinary shareholders of MAS other than Khazanah Nasional Bhd (Khazanah) whose names appear on the company’s record of depositors as at 5pm on Friday, December 19, 2014 (entitlement date), shall be entitled to receive a cash amount of RM0.27 for each MAS share held on the entitlement date.
“The capital repayment is expected to be made with ten days from the entitlement date.”
Of note, the trading of MAS shares will continue to be suspended until the completion of the SCR and subsequently, the delisting of MAS from the official list of Bursa Securities.
To recap, MAS’ SCR exercise is part of Khazanah’s 12-point restructuring plan costing RM6 billion to save the ailing national airline.
The 12-point restructuring plan’s key factors include the creation of new company, NewCo, which will house the new MAS, and migration of rightsized workforce and work practices into the NewCo.
Aside from that, the timeline for the plan include a complete delisting of MAS from Bursa Malaysia by end of 2014, a formal transition into NewCo by July 1, 2015, NewCo to achieve profitability by end of 2017, and the relisting of NewCo between 2018 and 2020.