KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 20): Nova MSC Bhd has decided not to proceed with its private placement exercise, which would have seen the e-solutions provider issuing up to 30% of its share capital to investors to raise RM35.17 million.

The decision to abort the fundraising exercise, which would have been the group's fourth private placement in less than four years, was made after taking into account the current market conditions, Nova MSC said in a filing to Bursa Malaysia.

This comes even after the group had earlier asked Bursa Securities for a further extension of time until March 2020 to undertake the exercise.

Some RM12.97 million of the proceeds was intended for funding the expenditure of Nova MSC's existing projects, and another RM9 million was for financing the overseas expansion of its IT portal system FORNAX, which performs automated building codes compliance checking with online viewing of checking results.

A further RM9 million was to have gone towards strategic investments into complemenary businesses in artificial intelligence and automation for its e-government and healthcare segments, while RM3 million was to be used to repay bank borrowings and RM1.2 million to defray the placement's estimated expenses.

Nova MSC founder Steven Chan Wing Kong had previously said the fundraising exercise was necessary to speed up market expansion plans, after the group spent its past few years extensively on research and development.

"We started our business by developing our own software, both in the healthcare and e-government areas. We are not just resellers of products, so we have taken quite a number of years to develop and to get customers," the 62-year-old Singaporean had said.

Chan has been succeeded as group chief executive officer by co-founder Lai Teik Kin since May 28, but remains as an adviser for the group.

Nova MSC's share price rose half a sen or 6.25% to close at 8.5 sen today, valuing the ACE Market-listed group at RM63.88 million.

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