A new institutional shareholder just bought 60 million shares or a 3.77% stake in Hibiscus at 47.5sen via a direct business transaction on Nov 12.

Sources say this institutional had actually wanted to subscribe for Hibiscus' ongoing Convertible Redeemable Preference Shares (CRPS), but did not have the mandate to do so.

Hence, the next best thing was to get the shares from the open market.

Currently, the second tranche of the CRPS are being issued at a conversion price of 48 sen per CRPS.

At its conversion price of 48 sen, and based on Hibiscus' market price of 51.5 sen, investors who took up the CRPS, are automatically already  'in the money'.

Yesterday in a press release, Hibiscus managing director Dr Kenneth Gerard Pereira (see pic below) announced that he intends to subscribe for a total of 33.5 million Islamic Convertible Redeemable Preference Shares (CRPS) in the second tranche of CRPS for RM33.5 million.

Thus, this would dispel rumours of Kenneth selling off his stake in the company to cash out. Some investors had saw the Bursa announcement where Ken was disposing 60 million of Hibiscus shares, but this was simply to make way for the new institutional shareholder.

Kenneth's proposed subscription of the CRPS will be funded from the proceeds of a disposal of 60 million Hibiscus Petroleum ordinary shares at 47.5 sen each by Hibiscus Upstream Sdn Bhd, a private company majority-owned by Kenneth, said the press release.

The second tranche of the CRPS is part of the multi-tranche CRPS exercise, which was announced on 9 September 2020.

The utilisation of the proceeds of the CRPS will be for the acquisition of interests in producing upstream oil and gas assets in the South East Asia region.

It will be interesting to find out who the new institutional shareholder in Hibiscus is.

Hibiscus just got more interesting.