KUALA LUMPUR: MORGAN Stanley Group has bought more shares in Media Prima Bhd, pushing the integrated media company’s share price up as much as eight per cent yesterday.
The stock hit a high of 82 sen, or 7.2 per cent, in early trade with a heavy volume of 12.21 million units traded at 10.57am.
Media Prima peaked to 84 sen before easing to close 4.58 per cent higher at 80 sen over Monday’s close of 76.5 sen.
In its filing with Bursa Malaysia yesterday, the company said Morgan Stanley had acquired 755,000 shares, bringing its total shareholding to 88.84 million or equivalent to an eight per cent stake.
Market observers said there is a potential for further uptrend in Media Prima’s share price.
This is expected, especially when a foreign company continues to buy shares in a local firm.
An analyst said the stock has been trading at below the net tangible asset (NTA) per share, which indicates that the share price last week was cheap.
“If a foreign investment bank comes in, whenever the company’s share price is below NTA per share, it is an indication of share price rebound.
“The arrival of a foreign investment bank signals that a lot of investors would buy shares in Media Prima,” he told NST Business.
Global investors, he said, are looking at special opportunities to benefit from the stock’s recovery and it is cheaply priced.
“They found the shares to be cheap and this could be one of the opportunities. As long as investors see the potential, they would stay for a long period.”
He added that on a longer term, improved consumers’ confidence would lead to better advertising sentiment.
“When the economy and advertising segment is doing better — the operations and fundamentals of the Media Prima group should be better. Thus, the share price should recover,” he said.
MIDF Research’s telco, media and tech analyst Martin Foo said there could be some earnings upside for Media Prima from the upcoming election.
“At this point of time, the group’s best performer would be the out-of-home segment due to the mass rapid transit and light rail transit projects,” he added.