KUALA LUMPUR: Islamic fund management company PMB Investment Bhd believes Malaysia’s fundamentals are still intact despite the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak.
Citing the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) which rippled through the global markets in the first quarter of 2003, CEO Najmi Haji Mohamed said the epidemic dragged the benchmark FBM KLCI down by almost 8% in January that year.
“But eventually, it was a knee-jerk reaction as Malaysia’s fundamentals were still intact and we saw the FBM KLCI gained over 20% by the end of 2003.
“That’s why we say that probably, this is just a knee-jerk reaction,” he told a media briefing after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between PMB Investment and Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN) here today.
Asked if the company had adjusted its investment portfolio in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, Najmi said it does rebalance its portfolio from time to time, as different funds have different mandate and objectives.
“When the coronavirus broke out last month, we had already positioned ourselves in most of the healthcare and glove sectors.
“We foresaw that these sectors would benefit the most compared with the tourism sector, which has been affected the most (amid the outbreak),” he added.
Despite the challenging environment, Najmi anticipates that the company would still declare fund dividends for this year due to the strong fundamentals in the country, as predominantly, the shariah-compliant equities invested by the company are in Malaysia.
Under the MoU, BSN has been appointed as PMB Investment’s seventh institutional unit trust agent to promote and distribute two of its 15 unit trust products – the PMB Shariah Premier Fund (equity fund) and PMB Shariah Cash Management Fund (money market fund).
Najmi expects the sales of the two products to reach between RM10 mil and RM20 mil by year-end. – Feb 4, 2020, Bernama
