KUALA LUMPUR: The Weststar Group, a diversified regional conglomerate, may list its aviation arm Wetstar Aviation Services Sdn Bhd (WAS) as part of the company’s expansion plan.
Its founder and managing director Tan Sri Dr. Syed Azman Syed Ibrahim said the company was currently talking to investment bankers on the options for future growth, including possible plans for WAS to debut on the local stock exchange.
“Any growth, expansion or listing plans will be subject to the market environment. Any potential listing requires good valuation,” he told NSTP Business in an exclusive interview recently.
Syed Azman said the local stock market is currently in recovery mode and therefore still premature to determine a suitable listing date.
WAS’s major shareholders are Syed Azman with a 59.5 per cent stake, followed by US-based private equity firm KKR & Co with 30 per cent. KKR acquired the stake in 2013 for RM642 million.
Syed Azman said for the time being, the cash-rich WAS has sufficient funds to finance its expansion and is bidding for more new contracts in the Middle East that requires more new machines.
“We are currently tendering in Myanmar and Saudi Arabia. If we win these contracts, we need to buy 11 helicopters for those projects,” he said.
“We already have funding in place. The IPO process will complement the funding of those assets,” he added.
Syed Azman said the company is mainly involved in transporting personnel and goods for oil and gas (O&G) companies in Malaysia and overseas.
He said it is important for WAS not to depend only on the Malaysian market as it would not be a sustainable business model.
“That’s why WAS has also been providing service overseas such as in Morocco, Mauritania, Indonesia and Thailand in the last five years,” Syed Azman said, adding that WAS currently has about 30 Leonardo helicopters in operation.
With over 700 staff, WAS is the largest offshore helicopter transportation services provider in South East Asia, operating the largest AW139 helicopter fleet in the region.
The fleet, including three units of the AW189 super-medium helicopter, operate out of operation bases in Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.
“We currently have the support of the largest Leonardo’s Augusta maintenance centre in this region. We employ more than 100 engineers and over 124 pilots in our helicopters operations.
“We have maintenance bases in Kota Bahru, Kertih and Kota Kinabalu. We are also setting up new maintenance base in Miri, Sarawak this year for the AW189,” he added.