KUALA LUMPUR (June 24): Data storage and cloud specialist Kronologi Asia Bhd (KL:KRONO) is optimistic about its outlook for the financial year ending Jan 31, 2026 (FY2026), supported by the growing trend of data capacity expansion that it sees, despite prevailing macroeconomic uncertainties.

“Although there's a lot of market macro challenges, we are modestly optimistic about this year, FY2026, to achieve a [revenue] growth over last year's performance," Kronologi Asia Bhd chief executive officer Edmond Tay Nam Hiong said at the company's corporate briefing on Tuesday.

The company recorded RM301.6 million in revenue for FY2025, little changed from RM301.39 million in FY2024. Net profit for FY2025 rose to RM11.47 million from RM8.63 million in FY2024, due to supply chain optimisation and cost reduction, as well as a reversal of deferred tax liabilities.

The need for more data capacity stems from the explosion of unstructured data worldwide. This is data with no predefined format or organisation, like text documents, images, videos and social media posts, which makes it difficult to search, sort and analyse. Such data is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21%, reaching 166,762 exabytes in 2025 and 200,132 exabytes in 2026.

This is further accelerated by artificial intelligence (AI), which requires high-speed front-end processing to deliver instant responses to user queries. This relies on low-latency backend infrastructure, supported by intelligent platforms like DeepSeek that can interpret and learn from vast amounts of data, which need to be stored in archives.

Many organisations need to store data for more than a year. Some organisations, like banks, need to store data for more than a year, even when they don't usually access the data, said Kronologi’s chief operating officer Tan Jeck Min.

And the various technology companies setting up data centres in the country, especially in Johor, present opportunities to Kronologi Asia, said Tan, which could provide data storage solutions, including systems to store, manage and protect data, as well as data storage equipment for these facilities.

“We are looking to work closely (with them),” he said, but tempered that with: “It won’t happen so soon.”

Kronologi’s shares closed half a sen or 2.3% higher at 22.5 sen, giving the company a market capitalisation of RM200.3 million. Year to date, the counter is down seven sen.

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