SEPANG: Capital A Bhd has made its final step in exiting its Practice Note 17 (PN17) status by submitting its proposed regularisation plan to Bursa Malaysia Securities Bhd at 5pm on Monday.
Capital A chief executive officer Tan Sri Tony Fernandes said it expects to be fully out of PN17 status by the first quarter of 2025 pending several steps committed by the group to complete.
These include the green light for the regularisation plan from Bursa Malaysia followed by an extraordinar general meeting to obtain Capital A's shareholders' approval.
Post shareholders' green light, Capital A will submit its plan to the High Court for approval to finally exit the PN17 status.
"We have number one to get Bursa's approval. Number two, we have to get the shareholders' approval and then court approval. So, anything from three to four months.
"I hope Bursa Malaysia will look at it (regularisation plan) favourably and approve it quite quickly," he told the media after AirAsia MOVE's Christmas celebration at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) Terminal 2 yesterday.
Following Capital A's exit from PN17, the group will have six subsidiaries under its wing.
These companies include Teleport, Santan, Asia Digital Engineering (ADE), Big Financial Group, AirAsia MOVE and AirAsia brand co. (ABC).
Capital A's airline subsidiaries will be bought by AirAsia X and rename to AirAsia Group.
AirAsia X, which exited its own PN17 status on Nov 22, 2023, announced the purchase of Capital A's aviation business — AirAsia Aviation Group Ltd and AirAsia Bhd for RM6.8 billion.
Meanwhile, Capital A will get RM3 billion worth of AirAsia X shares while the latter assumes RM3.83 billion debt belonging to Capital A.
Fernandes said the regularisation plan included a capital reduction of RM6 million to strengthen Capital A's balance sheet by eliminating the losses incurred during the Covid-19 pandemic and reflect the true value of the group's underlying asset.
"It is huge for me, really huge. Not many companies come out of PN17. If you think about AirAsia, not only did we have (to go through) Covid (pandemic), but we had PN17 as well to contend with," he added.
Capital A fell into the PN17 status in January 2022.