KUALA LUMPUR, April 27 — Bursa Malaysia opened higher on Monday amid renewed interest as Malaysia is seen benefitting from increased data centre investments due to its reputation as a strategically secure hub, following stronger-than-expected earnings from US chip giant Intel Corp.
At 9.12 am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) rose 4.33 points to 1,724.67 from last Friday’s close of 1,720.34.
Malacca Securities Sdn Bhd said in a note that while the planned US-Iran negotiations in Pakistan are unlikely to proceed, Malaysia remains well positioned to benefit from rising data centre investments.
“This trend is likely to attract more large cloud service providers (CSPs) offering highly scalable, high-performance computing, storage and data management services to enterprises.
“This is especially evident following Intel’s recent earnings outperformance,” it said in a note today.
The benchmark index had earlier started the session 4.13 points higher at 1,724.47.
Market breadth was positive, with gainers outpacing losers 368 to 295. A total of 407 counters were unchanged, 1,678 untraded and 67 suspended.
Turnover stood at 613.13 million units, valued at RM303.71 million.
Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd, said in a note that it expected stock accumulation to continue for the local bourse, hence it anticipated the index to trend between the 1,715 and 1,730 range today.
Among heavyweights, Maybank and Public Bank advanced two sen each to RM11.18 and RM4.83, Tenaga Nasional was down four sen to RM14.62, CIMB was flat at RM7.80 and IHH Healthcare lost three sen to RM8.79.
On the most active list, Luster Industries improved 1.5 sen to 5.5 sen, VS Industry was flat at 22.5 sen, Jentayu Sustainable added half a sen to 29.5 sen, AMS Advanced accumulated 3.5 sen to 38 sen and Velesto earned half a sen to 32.5 sen.
Top gainers included Nestle which added RM1.80 to RM101.10, Malaysian Pacific Industries surged RM1.06 to RM38.90, Telekom Malaysia improved 32 sen to RM7.42, while Press Metal gaine
