Coronavirus impact just a knee-jerk reaction - PMB Investment

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 4 -- 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 the global markets in the first quarter of 2003, chief executive officer Najmi Mohamed said the epidemic dragged the benchmark FBM KLCI down by almost eight per cent 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 per cent by the end of 2003.

“That’s why we said 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 amid the coronavirus outbreak, Najmi said it did 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 said.

Despite the challenging environment, Najmi anticipated 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 from Malaysia.

Under the MoU, BSN has been appointed as PMB Investment’s seventh institutional unit trust agent to promote and distribute two out of its 15 unit trust products, namely the PMB Shariah Premier Fund (equity fund) and PMB Shariah Cash Management Fund (money market fund).

Najmi expected the sales of the two products to reach between RM10 million and RM20 million by year-end.

-- BERNAMA