KUALA LUMPUR, June 6 — Tricubes Bhd’s share price has plummeted from its 12-month high of 45 sen on April 21 to 10.5 sen at market close last Friday, reflecting scepticism about the company’s ability to see the 1 Malaysia email project through.
Trading volume has also taken a massive hit over the same period, from a 12-month high of 425,323 shares on April 21 to just 2,100 last Friday.
Tricubes’ stock market fortunes have been in steady decline since peaking two days after Pemandu announced that the little-known, ACE-listed company had been tapped to provide the free myemail.my email service to all Malaysians aged 18 and above.
Before the announcement, shares in Tricubes, flagged by auditors under Bursa Securities’ Guidance Note 3 (GN3) for its weak financial standing in October last year, were only worth 0.5 sen.
“The weakness (of the stock) reflects the market’s doubt about the company’s ability to carry through with the job as awarded,” a local fund manager told The Malaysian Insider.
He said the early jump in share price was due to the fact that the project awarded to Tricubes was, on the face of it, “very lucrative and sizeable” in relation to Tricubes’ market capitalisation of RM20 million.
But heavy resistance from the public, and key shareholders such as CIMB cutting its indirect stake in Tricubes to 4.6 per cent from 15 per cent, meant the high would not last, he pointed out.
An analyst at a local investment bank added: “I guess the fact that no one really follows (Tricubes) tells you about the outlook for the company.”
Tricubes chief executive Khairun Zainal Mokhtar admitted during a press briefing on April 26 that the 1 Malaysia email project was a “lifeline” meant to help regularise the company’s finances.
Tricubes, which describes itself as “the market leader in Malaysia in identity verification”, made a net loss of RM481,502 for the quarter ended March 31, compared with the RM72,083 net loss it posted in the corresponding period last year.
The RM50 million 1 Malaysia email project is expected to save the federal government RM200 million over 10 years by cutting the cost of sending official correspondence from RM1.00 to 50 sen.
While the basic service is free, users will have to pay for premium services such as end-to-end encryption.
But critics have questioned the need for the service, pointing out that companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! already provide free and secure web-based email accounts.
It is understood that Microsoft is offering its free Windows Live platform to Tricubes, which was supposed to start beta service at the end of April but has yet to do so.
Pemandu ran a two-page advertorial in all major newspapers early last month defending the project but insisted that it was a private-sector initiative that would not cost the government a single sen.
