With the dispute with former statutory auditor KPMG now before the courts, company CEO Mohd Abdul Karim Abdullah told FMT the company was looking forward and focusing on fulfilling its promise of strong results to its shareholders.
“Alhamdullilah, back to business as normal, and the company should be able to emerge as a better, stronger and more forceful business entity, not only domestically but also internationally,” he said.
The company announced RM286.3 million in new foreign and local contracts earlier this month which include deals with oil and gas company PT Pertamina EP for work in Indonesia and with Gas Malaysia Distribution Sdn Bhd locally.
Karim said these contracts were proof that companies still had faith in their technical expertise and were confident that their recovery was on track, hinting that these contracts were just the beginning.
“We are working diligently, and very aggressively monitoring and discussing some sizeable contacts which we believe we should be able to close before year end,” he said.
In addition, he reiterated Serba Dinamik’s commitment to weather the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic to soon return to the 15% annual growth target the company was able to meet before the crisis, especially given many of the sectors the company operates in were considered essential and were able to continue in spite of restrictions.
He said Serba Dinamik had a sustainable business plan in place and was still honouring orders and looking for creative and innovative ways to continue serving its clients.
“The important thing here is that we are committed to the assurances and promises we have made to our shareholders, which means we will do our level best to ensure that the company is running on a profitability mode,” he said.
Karim said while the company was still pursuing local and international deals and continuing to deliver on agreed upon contracts, some partners pulled back when their alleged audit discrepancies came to light.
“I would not lie to say that everything is still normal, there are banks which pulled the brakes. At the same time, there are some banks who are still continuing their support and, of course, we have partners from other parts of the world who believe in us and are convinced of our integrity and technical capabilities.
“There are some business partners … they were not happy and they have actually stopped the collaborations or business ventures we had agreed on, but we have mitigated that with other options and alternatives, and as a result of that, I would say it is still a situation that is manageable.”
He also said the company’s diversification into other sectors was going smoothly and that it allowed them to offset challenges faced in certain areas of the business.
“The ICT component (information communication and technology) of the group has been progressing very well and as everybody knows, in this Covid-19 pandemic situation, frontier tech has been deployed in a big way… so in that segment, we are growing quite successfully.”
In June, Serba Dinamik initiated legal proceedings against KPMG for alleged negligence and breach of its contractual and statutory duties after the firm flagged a number of discrepancies during its audit, which resulted in the loss of billions of ringgit worth of market capitalisation.
Since then, the company has appointed Ernst & Young to perform a special review of the issues raised by KPMG and also appointed Nexia SSY to replace it, with the aim of returning a sense of normalcy to the company’s operations.