KUALA LUMPUR, April 15 — Khazanah Nasional Bhd has completed a placement of 53.8 million shares in Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) at RM5.80 per share, raising gross proceeds of RM312 million.

In a statement today, Khazanah said the placement price represents a 3.0 per cent discount to the closing market price of RM5.98 on April 14, 2021.

Following the exercise, Khazanah’s shareholding in TM will stand at 20.1 per cent.

The sovereign wealth fund said with the strong share price recovery and demand for TM shares driven by the digital transformation initiatives under the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint, the placement provided the opportunity to partially monetise its investment in TM.

"This will further increase the free float and attractiveness of the company’s shares. The shares were placed out to a pool of domestic long-only institutional investors, as well as multi-strategy institutional investors, with the bulk of investors being domestic long-only funds,” said Khazanah.

Credit Suisse and CIMB were the joint book runners for the share placement exercise. 

Khazanah said the share placement exercise was part of its ongoing efforts to rebalance its portfolio and recycle its investments from existing assets into new assets, including those that are strategic to the country’s future.

"In this regard, proceeds from the placement will be utilised for new investments, including investments in new strategic sectors that can help to spur Malaysia’s economic growth and create new high-skilled jobs,” it added. — Bernama