KLANG: Malaysia’s mini-mart tycoon Lee Thiam Wah says he is open to taking the 99 Speed Mart convenience-store chain to other countries.

His first priority though will be to reach every nook at home.

“There are no concrete plans, but we are looking for good opportunities” to enter other markets, Lee said in an interview just days after 99 Speed Mart Retail Holdings Bhd raised more than US$530mil in Malaysia’s biggest initial public offering (IPO) in seven years.

“The feasibility is quite important.”

Should 99 Speed Mart decide to go abroad, it won’t be its first foray. The company opened a store in Singapore in 2019, but swiftly exited the market less than a year later amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The over 2,600-store-strong chain now seeks to grow to 3,000 outlets nationwide by the end of 2025, and have a presence in Kelantan - the only state in Malaysia that it’s missing from.

Convenience-store giant 7-Eleven is for now the closest competition with more than 2,400 stores in the South-East Asian nation, followed by homegrown KK Super Mart, which has at least 861 outlets.

99 Speed Mart will continue to add 250 more stores a year in Malaysia, Lee said at the company’s headquarters in Klang.

The valuation of the initial share sale made Lee, who started as a roadside seller before opening his first grocery store in 1987, a billionaire with a fortune of about US$3.3bil.

Lee, who believes uniformity of the 99 Speed Mart stores to be the key to its success, said that the chain, after gaining scale, needed a more professional look. That’s what prompted him to moot the IPO in 2022 to unlock its next phase of growth.

The 60-year-old Lee, who is wheelchair-bound following a bout of polio in his childhood, said his focus will now be on growing two recently-launched initiatives: an online bulk sales platform, and a Chinese trading unit aimed at ramping up procurement and providing more imported household items at its Malaysian stores. Both were launched at end-2023.

Lee’s fortune has now put him in the company of wealthy tycoons such as Tan Sri Francis Yeoh and Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay - who are second-generation leaders of diversified conglomerates.

But Lee is not particularly excited about his own valuation. He said he is more happy that 99 Speed Mart achieved the valuation it did, and that he did not expect that the listing bid would grow as fast as it did. “I am looking at ways to be involved in other investments, but these investments won’t replace 99 as my primary business,” Lee said. “My time and effort, a majority of it, will still go to 99.”

Along with his wife Ng Lee Tieng, Lee also owns franchising rights for fast-food outlet Burger King in Malaysia and Singapore.

Cosmo Restaurants, the company that operates 120 Burger King restaurants in Malaysia, also shares the headquarters with 99 Speed Mart, within a 16-story office building in Klang. He is also the third-largest shareholder of Alliance Bank (M) Bhd.

 - Bloomberg