MAIN Market-listed information technology (IT) software and platform provider ARB Bhd (previously Aturmaju Resources Bhd) expects its self-developed cloud company secretary platform to be a lucrative income spinner for our group in the coming years.
The company has recently unveiled the ARB Cloud Cosec to fully automate existing company secretary services. The integrated platform is targeted for company secretary firms, public listed companies (PLCs) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The ARB Cloud Cosec roll-out is poised to create a sustainable recurring income of approximately RM100 mil for the group. In the near term, ARB targets to capture 10% of the PLCs market and 20% of the SMEs’ market.
“Due to the COVID-19 health crisis and shift in trend, we saw a business opportunity in the company secretarial services (CoSec) which traditionally would have involved a lot of hard copy filings, signing, storage of documents and other manual labour,” commented ARB’s executive director Datuk Seri Larry Liew Kok Leong.
“We have received a lot more enquiries in relation to solutions for cloud-based CoSec during the current pandemic which explains why we are positive that its demand would be strong.”
In 2020, there were 1.51 million SMEs in Malaysia with an average growth of 4.9% every year since 2015 while there are currently a total of 946 listed companies on Bursa Malaysia.
“There is a huge gap in digitalisation of CoSec services as most continue with the traditional methods which usually involve a lot of manual work,” Liew observed. “This, however, has changed during the pandemic.”
Among some of the key features of the ARB Cloud Cosec are automated manual signing process for approval, easier collaboration with clients, accessibility to information anytime and anywhere as well as the instant “Certified True Copy” (CTC) of documents.
“With these features, our clients will benefit from the ease of usage, centralised information on cloud platforms, automatic digital backup copies and security, data automation with high accuracy and more,” Liew pointed out.
Going forward, ARB is in a good position to expand its business regionally mainly due to the strong demand and the expected 12.4% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of the global spending on cloud consumer experience and relationship management (CRM).
According to Gartner Forecast Worldwide, CRM is the largest software as a service (SaaS) segment which is projected to grow from US$44.7 bil in 2019 to US$99.7 bil in 2025 thus attaining a 12.4% CAGR.
“Moving forward, ARB aims to focus on revenue cloud by developing a business strategy to maximise cloud opportunities by initiating additional cloud-based products to compliment the ARB Cloud Cosec solutions,” envisages Liew. “The strong global demand puts ARB in a good position to expand business regionally.”
At the close of yesterday’s (Sept 23) trading, ARB was up 1 sen or 3.92% to 26.5 sen with 7.54 million shares traded, thus valuing the company at RM161 mil. – Sept 24, 2021
