The board of directors of UMS Holdings 558 0.84% intends to seek a secondary listing on the main market of Malaysia&rsquo s stock exchange Bursa Malaysia, according to a release filed on July 17. 

 

This secondary listing will broaden the company&rsquo s investor reach and widen its investor base, and potentially increase the liquidity of the company&rsquo s shares through separate trading platforms, notes the release. 

 

It will also enable UMS Holdings to tap into additional platforms for future fundraising and provide it with the flexibility to access different equity markets to raise funds after taking into consideration investors&rsquo demand as well as the cost of raising equity funding on the respective stock exchange.

 

Currently, no application has been made to the Securities Commission Malaysia in relation to the secondary listing. 

 

On July 1, UMS' s wholly-owned subsidiary, Ultimate Manufacturing Solutions, announced that it has invested RM15.23 million ($4.5 million) to acquire a new 5.38 acres, or approximately 235,000 sq ft, of a 60-year leasehold industrial land site in Penang Science Park North, Malaysia. 

 

This news comes amid Malaysia&rsquo s ambition to become a semiconductor hub in Southeast Asia with ongoing geopolitical tensions between US and China forcing global supply chains to diversify. 

In late May, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim pitched the nation as a &ldquo neutral and non-aligned location for semiconductor production&rdquo , and targeted 500 billion ringgit in investment for its semiconductor industry. 

 

UMS Holdings held its IPO on the Singapore Exchange S68 0.00% back in 2001, where it raised $51.6 million via a placement of 40 million new shares at $1.29 each. About a decade later, it attempted a dual listing in Korea to tap the semiconductor ecosystem there. But a non-Korean company ahead of UMS in the application was caught for fraud, and the dual listing eventually did not go through.