Key Asic connects with Russian company
> Collaborating to develop smart transport system
PETALING JAYA: Key Asic Bhd is collaborating with a major system provider based in Russia to develop a smart transport system.
Key Asic specialises in designing and manufacturing Internet-of-Things (IoT) chips and systems connecting electronic and non-electronic items to the internet.
“The next big thing for us now is ‘connected cars’. That means getting the cars connected to the internet,” the group’s chairman and CEO Eg Kah Yee told reporters after its AGM here yesterday.
“So all the data that is related to the car then get uploaded to cloud, and can be used for basic applications such as collecting tolls, parking fees and also for safety,” he added, noting the cooperation is still in the designing phase.
Eg, who is also the chairman and managing director of Palette Multimedia Bhd, said in recent months, the group received enquiries from major medical equipment manufacturers to adopt its IoT products for medical devices.
“We actually have a big Japanese company that has made purchase of our chips to design and be put into cameras for medical use. This thing will take several months to design and another few months to go through the approval process before it goes to the market,” he said.
Currently, Eg said, healthcare and smart transport are the main markets for the group, noting that about 50% of its IoT chips are for the healthcare market. Its customers are largely from Europe, Taiwan, Japan and the US.
For the past six years, Eg said, the group has invested over RM120 million in research and development activities for its IoT-related products.
He said the group, which has been making losses for the last four years, is ready to make profit from its IoT investments by the second half of the current financial year ending May 31, 2018.
“The chip business is a very long-term business. We have to invest probably about four to five years, before the chips start to sell for the next five to 10 years.
“Our customers are people who design the systems. They will use our chips to build the systems and sell them, therefore our chip are sold with them,” Eg said.
For the three months ended March 31, 2017, the group’s net loss narrowed to RM2.1 million, from RM4.9 million in the comparative quarter of the preceding year. There were no year-on-year comparative figures as the group has changed its financial period from Dec 31 to May 31.
Key Asic’s share price gained 2.04% to 25 sen yesterday with 8.72 million shares traded.