Nova MSC confident of returning to the black next year

PETALING JAYA: ACE Market-listed Nova MSC Bhd is confident of returning to the black in 2019, bolstered by its high order book, better overall cost control and potential contract wins.

CGS-CIMB in a report yesterday said the company’s current order book stood at RM232mil, which is an all-time high.

“As Nova is confident of its strong track record in providing e-government services to well-recognised clientele, such as the Singapore and Brunei governments in various business segments, the group believes that it could stand to benefit from the growing demand.

“Nova’s total reported outstanding order book at end-March 2018 was at an all-time high of RM232mil.”

CGS-CIMB said that Nova had no direct peers, given its unique exposure to smart healthcare solutions.

“Nova also promotes smart healthcare by developing e-solutions to automate and streamline the operations of healthcare institutions. This includes its multi-organisation architecture system (Vesaluis.geo) that integrates multiple healthcare systems involving frontline, clinical, ancillary support and backend services into one.

“Users of this system include highly-established hospitals such as Novena Medical Centre (Singapore), Changi General Hospital (Singapore) and Penang Adventist Hospital (Malaysia),” said the research house.

Last month, Nova’s wholly owned subsidiary, novaCITYNETS Pte Ltd (NCN), was award- ed a tender by the Public Utilities Board in Singapore for a contract sum of about RM15.4mil.

Under the contract, NCN will supply, deliver and implement a building information modelling checking system for building plan submission for about 20 months and thereafter maintain the project for the next 20 months.

CGS-CIMB said the “crown jewel” of Nova’s digital government systems segment is the construction and real estate network (Corenet) that it developed 100% in-house - which has been used by the Singapore government since 2001.

“The system connects 16 Singapore government agencies, providing a one-stop point for the e-submission and processing of all appli- cations related to the construction and real estate industry.

“In October 2017, Nova announced that it had secured a RM83mil contract to upgrade the system to Corenet 2.0 and maintain it until October 2023.”

Nova is primarily involved in developing and supplying smart e-solutions in three main segments, namely, smart healthcare, government digitalisation and building automation and control.

“It targets both government and private entities. All its software are fully developed in-house. Nova’s current operations are mainly in Singapore (98% of its 2018 revenue), but it also has presence in other South-East Asian countries such as Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia,” said CGS-CIMB.