KUALA LUMPUR (May 31): Shares of Pharmaniaga Bhd settled at limit up today, as investors digested propositions to supply to the private sector amid the worsening Covid-19 situation in Malaysia.

The counter climbed in the final hour of trading to settle up RM1.51 or 29.84% at its four-month high of RM6.57, valuing the authorised supplier of the Sinovac vaccine here at RM1.72 billion.

Trading volume surged to 16.6 million shares, eight times its 200-day average of 1.9 million shares. It was the second biggest gainer across Bursa Malaysia today.

On May 28, Pharmaniaga said it is ready to supply the vaccines to the private sector once it fulfils its obligation of 12 million doses to the government by July this year.

The group has ordered another 10 million doses from Sinovac, on top of 14 million doses to be filled by Pharmaniaga.

HLIB Research, which has a "buy" call on Pharmaniaga, today increased its target price to RM5.52, from RM5.27, as it expects the 14 million doses of the fill-and-finish vaccine to add about RM15.5 million at the group's earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) level.

However, margins for the additional 10 million doses could be “razor-thin”, the research house said, taking into account that its nature will be purely trading.

Meanwhile, shares of UCrest Bhd, which has signed an MoU to identify potential manufacturers of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, rose two sen or 4.82% to 43.5 sen.

Malaysia’s new Covid-19 cases dropped for a second consecutive day to 6,824, although active cases continued to rise to 79,590.

To date, 12.12 million individuals have registered for the vaccine, 1.86 million of whom have received at least one dose.