Datasonic Group Berhad Annual Report 2021

DATASONIC GROUP BERHAD 26 CORPORATE DEVELOPMENTS On the corporate front, Datasonic completed the bonus issue of 1.35 billion new shares in the Group on the basis of one (1) share for every one (1) Datasonic share held (“Bonus Issue”) in 1 October 2020. The Bonus Issue is in line with the Group’s aim to reward its shareholders for their continuous support. This could potentially improve the trading liquidity of Datasonic’s shares on Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad without affecting the Group’s market capitalisation. In addition, this will also encourage greater participation by investors as well as potentially broadening the shareholder base. We are grateful for the support from all our shareholders who have been with us through thick and thin. The Group believes that this is another avenue for us to reward our shareholders in addition to our dividends. The Bonus Issue is an expression of our appreciation towards the confidence and patience extended to us while we grow our business. Meanwhile, in the financial year under review, the Group also undertook a private placement exercise of new ordinary shares representing up to 10% of the total number of issued shares. The objective of this exercise is primarily to increase the Bumiputera shareholdings of Datasonic, fund existing and future projects as well as pare down bank borrowings. In April 2021, 262.0 million new Datasonic shares were issued, raising RM126.3 million for the Group. The additional fund raised improves the competitiveness of the Group during tender processes and enables us to participate in more projects to further strengthen our income stream. Lastly, we take pride that our in-house operating system, Datasonic Chip Operating System (DCOS), is one of the best chip OS in the world with reading speed below 1.25 seconds using International Civil Aviation Organisation (“ICAO”) Basic Access Control (“BAC”) compliant dataset. DCOS has obtained internationally recognised Common Criteria (“CC”) Evaluation Assurance Level (“EAL”) 4+ certification, the yardstick of security in the realm of identity document. As part of our continuous innovation, we have also made DCOS to be forward compatible with product from tier one (1) formidable chip maker and complete the ecosystem from the upstream of life cycle processes i.e. management of key certificate to the down stream of personalisation and verification processes. MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION & ANALYSIS