KUALA LUMPUR: Sapura Energy Bhd is seeing heightened investor interest on Monday, and was the most actively traded counter in the early morning session.
At 10.30am, the stock was up one sen or 2.7% to 38.5 sen on 70.13 million shares traded.
The counter was upgraded by several investment research houses on Monday following the announcement of a 50:50 joint venture with OMV AG for the injection of the former's upstream assets.
RHB research on Monday upgraded the counter to a buy recommendation from neutral with a higher target price of 49 sen from 42 sen previously.
"Sapura Energy would be disposing upstream assets into a JV, while implied equity valuation of USD1,080m is significantly higher than our estimate – indicating that the deal is a huge positive.
"Risk reward has turned more favourable, while upstream assets have vast potential," said RHB.