KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 7): Abrdn PLC (formerly known as Aberdeen Asset Management PLC) has emerged as CTOS Digital Bhd’s substantial shareholder, after acquiring 120.99 million shares.

The latest purchase puts Abrdn, with a 5.238% stake, as the third largest shareholder in the company, putting it behind Creador and the Employees Provident Fund.

The 120.99 million shares were transacted on Feb 2, said CTOS in a bourse filing on Tuesday (Feb 7), without disclosing the transacted price.

Interestingly, private equity firm Creador pared down its shareholding in CTOS to 14.25% on Feb 2 from 26.6% previously, after disposing of 284.81 million shares via Inodes Ltd.

The disposal was undertaken through a placement, in which the placement shares were priced at RM1.45 each. Creador raised a total of RM413 million after completing the placement of 284.81 million in CTOS.

CTOS has declared a fourth interim dividend of 0.36 sen per share in conjunction with the release of its results for the fourth quarter ended Dec 31, 2022.

Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicated that Creador has forgone some RM10.25 million of dividend paycheck with the latest disposal of its shares.

For Abrdn, it should receive a dividend of about RM4.36 million based on its latest shares acquisition.

Separate filings on Tuesday showed that both Creador and EPF acquired shares in CTOS recently.

Creador acquired 4.87 million shares and currently owns 14.46% or 333.99 million shares in CTOS.

Meanwhile, EPF bought 840,800 shares in two transactions on Jan 31, raising its stake in CTOS to 7.2% or 166.41 million shares.

CTOS was listed in July 2021 and the stock rose to a record high of RM2.03 by October the same year. However, it lost 20.5% in value in 2022. The stock climbed to a near 10-month high of RM1.57 on Jan 26 before paring most of the gains over the past few trading days.

On Tuesday, the counter closed unchanged at RM1.45, just slightly above the RM1.42 price at end-2022. CTOS has a market capitalisation of RM3.35 billion.