KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia Bhd
is cautiously optimistic over an improved revenue performance in 2023, despite the global economic uncertainty creating volatility in the securities and derivatives markets.
"With continuous investments to develop new businesses, the Exchange is expected to sustain its profitability," it said in a bourse filing.
In the same filing, Bursa Malaysia reported that profit after tax and zakat in FY22 came to RM226.6mil, which was 36.2% lower than in the previous year.
It said this was due to overall trading revenue falling 30.7% to RM377.1mil in 2022 from the previous year while total operating expenses in 2022 increased 1.4% to RM292.7mil.
The market operator's earnings per share came to 28 sen in FY22 as compared with 43.90 sen in FY21.
In line with the performance, the board of directors declared a final dividend of 11.5 sen per share, amounting to about RM93.1mil. This brought the total payout for the year to 26.5 sen per share.
Bursa Malaysia chairman Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar said in a press statement that Bursa Malaysia's performance was resilient despite the challenging global operating conditions resulting in softening securities market trading.
He reported that on an annualised basis, securities trading value declined 41.5% in 2022 with average daily trading value (ADV) of RM2.1bil, although this remained higher than pre-pandemic ADV of RM1.9bil.
The derivatives market, however, performed better with average daily contracts (ADC) increasing 4.6% from 75,178 contracts in FY2021 to 78,621 contracts in FY2022.
Abdul Wahid said the commodity murabahah platform, Bursa Suq Al-Sila', similarly performed well with 22.3% higher ADV from RM37.3bil to RM45.6bil.
He noted also the active listing interest on the Exchange with 35 initial public offerings (IPO) recorded in 2022. The IPOs raised a total of RM3.5bil, which was higher than the amount raised by the 30 IPOs in 2021.
"These numbers prove that both companies and investors have confidence in the Malaysian capital market, and look at Bursa Malaysia as a worthy platform for fundraising and investing," he said.
Meanwhile, Bursa Malaysia CEO Datuk Muhamad Umar Swift said the market data business segment delivered 12.5% growth to RM60.8mil in 2022.
"To achieve further growth in our non-trading revenue, we will continue improving the delivery of richer data to clients to empower the industry to undertake analytics or offer better products or services," he added.
