Oei, also known as Teguh Ganda Wijaya, bought 251.76 million shares in NTPM via his vehicle Premier Investment Ltd.
In a bourse filing yesterday, NTPM said the shares were acquired by Premier Investment on May 10 via a share sale agreement, and the transaction is pending completion.
Back of the envelope calculations show that Oei would have spent around RM113.3 million to acquire his stake.
The addition of NTPM will sit nicely with Oei’s paper empire, headed by Indonesia-based Asia Pulp and Paper.
Oei, 79, hails from one of Indonesia’s richest families, the Widjaja family. He is the eldest son of Sinar Mas Group founder Eka Tjipta Widjaja.
A global conglomerate, Sinar Mas has operations spanning paper, real estate, financial services, agribusiness and communications.
NTPM chairman and managing director Lee See Jin is the largest shareholder in the company. Lee, who founded NTPM, holds a 29.05% direct and 12.33% indirect stake in NTPM.
News of the share sale agreement prompted the share price to jump as high as 8.89% or 4 sen to 49.5 sen yesterday. The shares gave back its gains today, falling 2 sen or 4.1% to 47 sen, valuing the company at RM527.9 million.
This comes after the company saw a recent low of 33 sen in November last year.
In the third quarter of the financial year ended April 30, 2023, NTPM posted a RM7.32 million net loss. In fact, the company has not performed well in the current financial year.
For the first three quarters of FY2023, NTPM racked up RM9.73 million in net losses as opposed to a net profit of RM24.76 million in the same period last financial year.
Despite revenue rising 15.82% to RM653.29 million from RM564.06 million in 9M FY2022, NTPM said higher costs of distribution, and operating utilities such as electricity and gas dragged the group’s bottom line into the red.
The group was also affected by higher raw material import costs, a weakening ringgit, and higher interest expense.
The tissue paper and personal products manufacturer has never posted any full-year loss since its listing in 2002.