A-Sonic Aerospace’s founder and CEO Janet Tan and executive director Irene Tay Gek Lim have raised their respective stakes in the company.
On June 3, Tan acquired 7,200 shares at around 70.7 cents each. This brings her direct interest to just over 32 million shares or 54.73%. With her deemed interest in another 319,833 shares, this means her total stake has risen to around 32.3 million shares or 55.28% of the company. Tan has been steadily increasing her stake in the company. On May 7, April 21 and April 23, she had acquired 46,700 shares for 67.15 cents each, 114,700 shares for 60.9 cents each and 19,100 shares for 65.6 cents each respectively.
Meanwhile, Tay on May 6 acquired 98,400 shares 66.7 cents each. Earlier on April 9, April 15 and 16, and April 29, she had acquired 100,000 shares for 57.5 cents each, 10,900 shares for 62 cents each and 5,700 shares for 67 cents each respectively.
On May 26, the company announced plans to issue bonus warrants at the ratio of one each for every four existing shares. The warrants give holders the right to subscribe for a new share at an exercise price of 8 cents, a generous discount of 88% off the last transacted A-Sonic share price of 66.5 cents on May 25, the day prior to the announcement.
The company has two main businesses. The first is the trading of aircraft and aircraft parts. The second is in logistics, where it manages supply chains. The company operates in 29 cities in 16 countries.
On March 1, A-Sonic reported that revenue for the year ended Dec 31, 2020, was up 30.9% y-o-y to US$269.8 million ($357.2 million) led by better rates in its logistics business. Earnings in the same period more than doubled to US$6.3 million from US$2.5 million a year earlier.
The earnings were lifted by several one-off items. There was the gain of US$2.7 million from the disposal of non-current asset held for sale; a former associate paid a dividend of US$1.1 million; it received government subsidies of around US$1.7 million and it wrote back an impairment allowance for trade receivable of some US$0.33 million.
While both the top and bottom lines improved, the company is careful to maintain a cautious tone. “We are on uncharted waters. Covid-19 is expected to continue for most of 2021” and, possibly, well beyond, the company said in its earnings commentary.
Change is the only constant
Bhupendra Kumar Modi, chairman of Digilife Technologies, saw an increase in his stake in the company. On June 2, he had acquired 2,800 shares for a total of $6,986, or between $2.48 and $2.55 each.
The purchase, which was carried out via a vehicle called Spice Bulls, increased his deemed stake to just below 6.28 million shares, or 49.6%. In addition, Modi has a direct stake of 804,634 shares or 6.36%. In total, his interest in the company rose to nearly 7.1 million shares or 55.96%. Prior to June 2, Modi on May 25 and June 1 also acquired 2,000 shares for $2.50 each and 3,000 shares for an average of $2.51 each.
Up till May 6, Digilife Technologies was known as Sevak to reflect the company’s new focus on the electric vehicle ecosystem. The name change — not the first in its history — was approved by shareholders at an EGM on April 30. It was known as MediaRing when it was listed at the height of the dotcom bubble in late 1999 before changing its name to Si2i.
Photo: A-Sonic Aerospace website
