KUALA LUMPUR (May 2): Travel agency company Parlo Bhd has fixed the issue price for the first tranche of its placement share at close to 20% discount, according to its bourse filing on Tuesday (May 2).

The loss-making company set the issue price of its 98.62 million placement shares at 7.4 sen each, which is 1.8 sen or 19.74% lower than its five-day volume weighted average market price up to last Friday (April 28).

In March last year, Parlo proposed a private placement of up to 131.05 million new ordinary shares, representing approximately 30% of the total number of issued shares of the company.

Back then, Parlo had said the proposed private placement may be implemented in several tranches within six months, and potentially has several price-fixing dates and issue prices.

“The implementation of the proposed private placement in multiple tranches would provide flexibility to the company to procure interested investors to subscribe for the placement shares expediently from time to time,” Parlo said.

The company had envisioned a proposed private placement of up to RM14.42 million based on the illustrative price of 11 sen per share.

Parlo has intended to use the funds to support its plan to diversify into the medical device consumables and household care products business.

It has also planned to use a portion of the private placement funds for working capital purposes for its travel services business.

On Tuesday, Parlo’s shares settled unchanged at nine sen apiece, bringing it a market capitalisation of RM42.23 million.