SHARES of medtech firm QT Vascular (QTV) surged 112.5 per cent or 0.9 Singapore cent to close at 1.7 Singapore cents on Tuesday after the company announced plans to acquire a Mongolian mining and energy company called Tengri Coal and Energy (TCE) for S$1 billion in cash and new shares.

 

If completed, the transaction is expected to result in a reverse takeover (RTO) of QTV. QTV' s board of directors expected the deal to give the company " a new lease of life" and could potentially increase its market capitalisation.

 

As it is likely that the TCE group may be eligible for a mainboard listing on SGX, QTV intends to concurrently seek a transfer of its listing from Catalist to the main board.

 

QTV investors cheered the prospects of a potential turning point for the company. The counter emerged as the most actively traded one on the Singapore bourse for the day, with some 527.3 million shares changing hands. This surpassed the counter' s three-month average volume of 456.6 million shares.

 

The company' s shares fell 11.1 per cent or 0.1 Singapore cent during the first 15 minutes of trading, before clawing back losses to the opening price of 0.9 Singapore cent at 9.30am. Following the midday break, QTV shares surged 55.6 per cent or 0.5 Singapore cent to 1.4 Singapore cents. The counter experienced swings in its price during the second half of the trading day, but closed at its intra-day high of 1.7 Singapore cents.

 

In a bourse filing on Aug 14, QTV said its losses for the first half of the year had narrowed to US$4.8 million from US$5.7 million in the year-ago period. This was despite a 94.5 per cent plunge in revenue to US$200,000 from US$4.5 million. The company attributed the smaller losses to lower expenses, as well as additional income earned from transitional services provided to Medtronic and Teleflex.