KUALA LUMPUR: Main Market-listed ARB Bhd is the top company in the Southeast Asia region in Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd (DTTL)'s 2020 Asia Pacific Technology Fast 500 index.
This was based on the 2020 Asia Pacific Technology Fast 500 index that was recently released by DTTL.
ARB executive director Datuk Sri Larry Liew Kok Leong said being recognised as the top company in the Southeast Asia region under Deloitte Touche's list is a reflection of the proactive measures and innovation undertaken by the group especially during a year impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
"We can see from the list that only eight of the Southeast Asia companies made it to the list. It also shows the competition that we are facing in the Asia Pacific region.
"Nonetheless, I'm proud of the hard work put in by the group in our transformation to grow both our topline and bottom line over the last three years as we shift our focus into our information technology (IT) and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions," Larry said in a statement today.
The index is an annual ranking of the fastest-growing Asia Pacific companies in the hardware, software, communications, media, life sciences and clean technology industries.
Awardees are selected for the Technology Fast 500 ranking based on their percentage of fiscal year revenue growth over three years.
ARB beats an Indonesian company, five Singapore-based companies and another Malaysian company to top the list in Southeast Asia region with 799 per cent growth rate over three years.
ARB's growth rate also surpassed the average revenue growth of 551 per cent of the top 500 companies in Technology Fast 500 this year.
The company is also among only two Malaysian companies who made it to the index while only eight Southeast Asian companies are on the list.
Further, the company has seen its revenue jumped by 114 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to RM219.45 million from RM102.64 million for the financial year ended December 31, 2020 (FY20) while net profit has also seen a sharp increase of 25 per cent to RM43.46 million from RM34.77 million during the same period.
This was despite the negative impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the domestic economy that has led to a gross domestic product (GDP) contract by 5.6 per cent in 2020.
ARB has two core main business namely enterprise resource planning (ERP) and IoT.
"We expect to see our ERP and IoT segments continue to drive strong growth for the company.
"Since the outbreak of the Covid-19, businesses have opted for cloud-computing services as part of the measures to navigate their business operations to adapt to the new norm of working from home," Larry said.