SGX extends MTP review for 13 companies to September

SINGAPORE — Thirteen listed companies affected by the recent market volatility have been given until Sept 1 by the Singapore Exchange (SGX) before their six-month volume-weighted average prices are reviewed under the Minimum Trading Price Requirement (MTP).

These 13 companies saw their six-month volume-weighted average price dip below S$0.20 in recent months.

With the three-month extension, there will not be any fresh additions to the SGX watch list due to MTP today.

The 13 companies are Ban Leong Technologies, China Gaoxian Fibre Fabric Holdings, Falcon Energy Group, King Wan Corp, Krisenergy, KS Energy, Mirach Energy, OKH Global, Parkson Retail Asia, Ramba Energy, Sunvic Chemical Holdings, Swissco Holdings, and Vard Holdings.

Introduced in March 2015, the MTP requirement of S$0.20 aims to improve the quality of the market and reduce the risk of excessive speculation in low capitalisation stocks.

Of the 13 companies which saw their six-month volume-weighted average price dip below S$0.20 in recent months, two are already on the SGX watch list as they had earlier triggered the financial entry criteria.

The financial entry criteria are pretax losses for the three most recently completed consecutive financial years, and an average daily market capitalisation of less than S$40 million over the previous six months.

SGX added that four companies have just triggered the financial entry criteria. Of that number, three will join the watch list today because of the criteria, while one is already on the watch list due to MTP.

The watch list currently has 41 mainboard-listed companies under the MTP rule. The watch list also has 33 companies under the financial criteria of which 16 are not compliant with the MTP rule.

All companies placed on the watch list from March 3 this year have three years to carry out actions to improve their share price, if they are non-compliant with MTP, or improve their financial performance if they triggered the financial criteria.