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Sunday, November 17, 2013

Rights issue for Utusan Melayu

Folks,

Recently Utusan Melayu (M) Bhd., a public listed newspaper company in Malaysia was in the limelight - the management intend to raise up to RM 40 mil via a two-call rights issue.

Let's take a look at brief financial performance - Utusan has been making losses quite a number of times (as evidenced in the image shown below).

However, for 2Q2013, it make a profit of RM 1.92 mil, a good signal to shareholders. But Utusan needs to do more to strengthen its financial position.

Also, as evidenced from the Nielsen research, Utusan's readership gradually declines. Its market share has also dropped to 11.06%.

From my unscientific personal observation, Utusan seems to be the only paper that is least popular and less appealing to the general public.

This can be seen in many 7-Eleven stored by midnight where papers other than Utusan are almost completely sold-off but when it comes to Utusan, there are still many balance to be returned to the news vendor in the next morning.

This clearly signifies that its sales has dropped tremendously.

For it to survive in the competitive era of making news headlines in the country, Utusan needs to revamp its business completely and start a new transformation program which will bring it back to its glorious days.

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Image source: "Rights issue a lifeline for Utusan Melayu" in The Edge Weekly, Issue #989, Nov. 18th, 2013; page 36.

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