BEIJING, Oct 19 (Reuters) – China has accused the U.S. of stealing secrets and infiltrating the country’s national time centre, warning that serious breaches could have disrupted communication networks, financial systems, the power supply and the international standard time.
The U.S. National Security Agency has been carrying out a cyber attack operation on the National Time Service Center over an extended period of time, China’s State Security Ministry said in a statement on its WeChat account on Sunday.
Sign up here.
The ministry said it found evidence tracing stolen data and credentials as far back as 2022, which were used to spy on the staff’s mobile devices and network systems at the centre.
The U.S. intelligence agency had “exploited a vulnerability” in the messaging service of a foreign smartphone brand to access staff members’ devices in 2022, the ministry said, without naming the brand.
The national time centre is a research institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences that generates, maintains and broadcasts China’s standard time.
The ministry’s investigation also found that the United States launched attacks on the centre’s internal network systems and attempted to attack the high-precision ground-based timing system in 2023 and 2024.
The U.S. embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China and the U.S. have increasingly traded accusations of cyberattacks in the past few years, each portraying the other as its primary cyber threat.
The latest accusations come amid renewed trade tensions over China’s expanded rare earths export controls, and the U.S. threatening to further raise tariffs on Chinese goods.
Reporting by Liz Lee; Editing by Michael Perry
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Bellevue, Washington, Oct. 18 (Jiji Press)–Sumitomo Life Insurance Co. will consider using digital technologies including generative artificial intelligence to support its sales agents, Yukinori Takada, president of the Japanese insurer, said in a recent interview with Jiji Press.
The comment followed a series of scandals in the industry that called into question the relationships between life insurance companies and their sales agents and highlighted the need to review the practice of supporting agents by dispatching employees on loan.
Takada, also chairman of the Life Insurance Association of Japan, said, “We are currently in a major turning point” for building appropriate relationships with sales agents.
The interview was held in Bellevue in the U.S. state of Washington, where Takada attended a two-day meeting with the heads of two overseas subsidiaries of Sumitomo Life through Thursday.
Japanese life insurance companies have dispatched employees to their sales agents such as banks to provide support in selling their insurance products.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Apple’s new iPhone 17 is kick-starting the company’s strongest growth in smartphone sales since the Covid-19 pandemic, as the biggest redesign of its flagship product in years proves a hit.
Early momentum for the redesigned versions of its mobile device has proven stronger than expected before its September launch, according to industry insiders who monitor Apple’s supply chain, mobile operators and the length of time customers must wait for deliveries.
Analysts forecast that smartphone revenues will return to 4 per cent growth in the latest fiscal year, hitting $209.3bn, according to Visible Alpha data. The growth rate will rise to almost 5 per cent in fiscal 2026, with iPhone revenues hitting $218.9bn.
That has led to market confidence building as Apple heads into the crucial holiday sales season, despite delays to releasing artificial intelligence features and Donald Trump’s tariffs weighing on the Silicon Valley giant’s share price over the past year.
“It’s fair to describe the iPhone 17 launch as surprising versus where Wall Street expectations were at the end of August” before launch, said Gene Munster at Deepwater Asset Management.
Apple’s smartphone revenues fell 2 per cent in its 2023 financial year, which ends in September, and were flat last year, after consumers splurged on consumer electronics during the pandemic.
But significant upgrades to the iPhone’s cameras, displays and batteries this year are tempting more customers to upgrade ageing devices.
Citing Apple’s own store data as well as carrier data, Bank of America analysts this week said shipping times shown for the iPhone 17 are longer than in previous years, which “could indicate strong demand”.
“When lead times are longer, it’s usually a better product cycle,” Munster said. Wait times on the new iPhone are about 13 per cent longer than last year, he added, possibly signalling a broader “upgrade cycle”.
On 30 October Apple will report its fiscal fourth quarter to the end of September, including the first few weeks of iPhone 17 sales.
“Clearly it’s a very strong quarter for Apple,” said the IDC’s Francisco Jeronimo. “I don’t remember the last time I saw queues outside the Apple store like I’ve seen this year.”
Checks of Apple’s supply chain suggested orders of the iPhone 17 were “much stronger” than last year’s iPhone 16, he added.
Tracked by unit volumes, iPhone sales remain broadly flat. Between Apple’s fiscal 2024 and 2026, units are expected to hover around 235mn, according to Visible Alpha data.
By 2027, analysts predict the company’s flagship product will start selling more than 240mn units, before rising to almost 260mn by the end of the decade, with market rumours pointing to the launch of a foldable iPhone next year.
Apple no longer discloses unit sales and prefers to focus investor attention on revenues, with much of its overall growth from its existing user base.
The latest iPhone line-up has been boosted by generous trade-in programmes. The base model has benefited from government subsidy policies for cheaper phones in China.
iPhones continue to account for more than half of Apple’s approximately $390bn in annual revenue. A hit could help Apple turn around a difficult 2025, marked by trade tensions that disrupted its global supply chains.
Apple’s shares hit a new yearly high in September around the iPhone 17 launch, but recently dipped with the broader market as Trump threatened 100 per cent tariffs on China.
Despite speculation of tariff-driven cost increases, Apple opted not to raise prices for the device.
Some analysts warn market expectations for the new iPhone have got ahead of themselves. Earlier this month Jefferies downgraded Apple shares to “underperform” citing “excessive expectations” for iPhone demand.
Simply sign up to the Indian business & finance myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
India’s “shoestring” research and development budgets leave it dependent on strategic rival China for the technology it needs to boost manufacturing, said steel billionaire Sajjan Jindal as he prepares to launch an electric vehicle brand.
The 65-year-old chair of JSW Group, which owns India’s largest steelmaker, said his company was in talks with several Chinese manufacturers, including BYD and Geely, to bring technology to India in preparation for an EV launch by June next year.
“The technology rests in China. Even Europe is taking the technology from China,” Jindal told the Financial Times. “China has taken a huge leap versus the European auto companies, so we don’t have any option.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to boost domestic manufacturing, with a focus on EVs, smartphones and semiconductors. His government has offered corporate tax incentives and consumer subsidies.
The risks of India’s reliance on China were made stark in 2020, when the nuclear-armed neighbours reignited a decades-long dispute along their Himalayan border and Beijing “started to clamp down on sharing technology with India”, said Jindal.
New Delhi in turn increased scrutiny of Chinese investments, denied most visas and blocked partnerships with manufacturers, including BYD.
While ties have begun to improve and Modi made his first visit to China since 2019 in August, New Delhi remains sceptical of Chinese technology and investment. It also wants to gain some of the business stemming from western companies trying to diversify their supply chains away from China.
However, Indian companies, including JSW, are not investing enough in R&D because they are focused on building up their capacity, said Jindal. India spends just 0.66 per cent of its GDP on R&D, compared with China’s 2.4 per cent and 3.5 per cent for the US.
“The government is trying to encourage the domestic industry, but it’s also shoestring budgets,” he said.
JSW, which has interests in ports, cement, energy and defence, entered the EV sector in 2023, producing MG Motor-branded cars as part of a joint venture with Chinese state-owned SAIC Motor.
The Chinese company is now looking to reduce its stake, said Jindal. The joint venture needs “more cash to be injected” but SAIC is “reluctant”, he said, adding that JSW would infuse more capital.
“I told the [SAIC] chairman . . . we want to own a 100 per cent stake in a new venture where we will do a lot of innovation ourselves,” he said, but SAIC wants “everything to be developed in China and then to be produced in India”.
SAIC did not respond to a request for comment.
Batteries — a core component of EVs — are one of the biggest hurdles. India mostly imports cells from China, Japan and South Korea, and domestic production is forecast to meet just 13 per cent of the country’s EV battery cell demand by 2030, according to S&P Global Mobility.
“Eventually our goal is to manufacture, design and develop the technology in India,” said Jindal, but until then they would have to use Chinese technology.
China on Wednesday said it had filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization over India’s EV and battery subsidies, arguing that they “give Indian industry an unfair competitive advantage and harm Chinese interests”.
JSW Groups made $23bn in revenue in the fiscal year to March 2025, of which steel accounted for $19bn. The EV joint venture, which is privately held, last reported revenue of less than $1bn in the fiscal year to March 2024.
JSW Steel on Friday reported a Rs16.2bn ($185mn) net profit in the quarter to September, jumping almost fourfold from the same period a year earlier.
Jindal expressed optimism that ties with China would continue to improve, especially after President Donald Trump’s 50 per cent tariffs on India showed the risks of a trade relationship with the US.
“Either bullets will talk or business will talk,” he said of India-China relations. “Both cannot talk simultaneously.”
The North Sea boasts some of the world’s best wind speeds for power generation, averaging more than 9 metres a second. But when the German government offered two prime spots to offshore developers this summer, it did not receive a single bid.
The auction’s failure in August marked a stark contrast to two years earlier, when oil companies BP and TotalEnergies agreed to pay a total €12.6bn for the rights to develop two large wind farms in German waters in the North Sea and Baltic Sea.
The industry’s enthusiasm has collapsed as higher interest rates and supply chain strains stretch the business case for projects to breaking point and political support sours in the US, where President Donald Trump has sought to block developments and suspend permits.
“Offshore wind has been going through a challenging time,” said Sven Utermöhlen, head of offshore wind at German energy company RWE, which has frozen its US offshore wind investment plans as it seeks to move away from coal.
“This has been predominately driven by rising costs, but also an overarching political climate where the fight against climate change and the drive for decarbonisation and energy transition has somewhat slowed down and has made space for other priorities.”
Since 2023, 24.1 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity and offtake agreements have been cancelled, according to figures from energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. One gigawatt can power the equivalent of 1mn UK homes.
Ambitious government targets for the technology appear out of reach, raising questions over the pace of efforts to shift away from fossil fuels and reduce the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Wood Mackenzie estimates that outside of China, roughly 100GW of installed capacity could be up and running by 2030 — 140GW short of global targets for total installed capacity that year.
Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.
The industry’s struggles come after rapid growth in the rock-bottom interest rate environment of the 2010s and early 2020s, with installed capacity growing from about 3GW in 2010 to 78.5GW by the end of last year, about half of which is in China. Meanwhile, developers competing for new seabed projects and government contracts squeezed supply chains to push down costs.
Those dynamics have shifted since the coronavirus pandemic, as interest rates surged and companies in an overstretched supply chain pushed back. Analysts at TGS 4C say the industry’s capital expenditure has climbed to €3mn per megawatt, up from €2.5mn in 2022.
Projects have been cancelled or their valuations have dropped, while developers have shunned government offshore wind auctions from the Netherlands and Denmark to India. At the same time, oil companies have doubled down on fossil fuels.
Denmark’s Ørsted, the world’s largest offshore wind developer, has had to raise an extra $9bn from investors and this month said it would cut a quarter of its 8,000-strong workforce. London-headquartered Corio Generation, backed by Macquarie, has cut jobs, while Spanish developer BlueFloat Energy has quit the market.
The industry’s troubles contrast with the breakneck growth of solar power, which the International Energy Agency expects to account for 80 per cent of the projected addition of 4,600GW in global renewables capacity this decade, fuelled by falling costs and relatively straightforward permitting.
The offshore wind industry’s future hinges on the extent to which governments, utilities and corporate customers support the higher costs, helping to provide the industry and supply chain with the certainty it needs to invest.
“The central sticking point is how to distribute costs and risks between developers and taxpayers,” analysts at TGS 4C said in a recent report.
Denmark and Germany have both decided to offer support in the form of government-backed contracts-for-difference, to try to avoid repeats of failed auctions.
Under the contracts, pioneered in the UK, developers are guaranteed a fixed price for electricity but have to pay back the difference if the wholesale price they can sell electricity for is higher.
Many developers see such contracts as the best way to develop offshore wind given the stability they provide. Søren Lassen, head of wind at Wood Mackenzie said: “You’re really looking at the CFD as the option if you want to deliver renewables at the scale that the governments are still projecting.”
Vietnam is also introducing the contracts as it tries to get its offshore wind industry off the ground. It is part of a push in Asia, including in the Philippines and South Korea, which along with some tempering of interest rates and other costs has boosted optimism in the sector.
“I am encouraged,” said Ben Backwell, chief executive of the Global Wind Energy Council trade group. “We have got over a lot of the humps we were facing.”
Rasmus Errboe, the chief executive of Ørsted, who has warned of the risk of a “downward spiral” in the industry, this month said he remained “bullish” about its future.
The IEA also this month downgraded its growth outlook for offshore wind from 212GW to 140GW by 2030. But the reduced pace would still be more than double that of the previous five years.
Industry advisers and executives are hopeful the shakeout of projects and failed auctions has put the industry on a more sustainable footing, by weeding out bad market mechanisms and undisciplined players.
“Bad auction designs are disappearing because there’s no optimism that would make people tolerate them,” said Jérôme Guillet, director at boutique advisory firm Snow. “People that actually want to do offshore wind will do offshore wind now and it makes sense in some countries with the new stabilised current project economics.”
Political support, however, is increasingly fragile.
In Britain, the world’s second-largest offshore wind market, the decision to raise the maximum prices in an upcoming CfD auction to fend off a repeat of a failed auction in 2023 has prompted criticism from the government’s opponents. Insurgent rightwing party Reform, which is leading in the polls, has warned that it could “strike down” the contracts. The speed of obtaining permits and grid connections also remains a challenge.
Meanwhile, the prospects for the industry in the US have taken a nosedive under Trump, who has described wind as the “worst form” of energy and frozen seabed leasing for offshore developments.
His government in April ordered Norway’s Equinor to stop work on its Empire Wind project off the coast of New York, before allowing it to go ahead in May. In August, it ordered Ørsted to stop work on its Revolution Wind project, although a judge has persuaded the court to lift the order for now.
Leading turbine manufacturers such as Spain-based Siemens Gamesa and Denmark’s Vestas are investing in new capacity. But TGS warns that there is still likely to be a shortfall unless Chinese manufacturers expand further into global markets.
Trade disputes and geopolitical concerns could get in the way of that. Europe is investigating whether China’s wind turbine makers are receiving unfair subsidies, while Chris Wright, the US energy secretary, has urged countries to buy less technology from China, telling reporters recently that “the goal of the US and our allies is to reduce our dependence on imports from China”.
Nonetheless, RWE’s Utermöhlen argues that factors in the sector’s favour, such as its ability to supply homegrown power during more hours of the day than solar, and from father away from people’s homes, will continue to propel the industry.
“The fundamentals are intact,” he said, but the industry needed “to get to a sustainable growth path” where supply and demand were balanced. “That will mean the growth trajectory is less steep than it was envisaged but that would be sustainable.”
Climate Capital
Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here.
Are you curious about the FT’s environmental sustainability commitments? Find out more about our science-based targets here
Oct 18 (Reuters) – Chinese tech giants, including Alibaba-backed Ant Group (688688.SS), opens new tab and e-commerce group JD.com (9618.HK), opens new tab, have paused plans to issue stablecoins in Hong Kong after the government raised concerns about the rise of currencies controlled by the private sector, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.
Companies have put their stablecoin ambitions on hold after receiving instructions from Chinese regulators, including the People’s Bank of China and Cyberspace Administration of China, not to move ahead with the plans, the FT reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Sign up here.
Hong Kong’s legislature passed a stablecoin bill in May that established a licensing regime for fiat-referenced stablecoin issuers in Hong Kong, providing regulatory clarity for future participants.
Under the new regime, any person who issues stablecoins in Hong Kong – or issues stablecoins backed by Hong Kong dollars, whether within or outside the city – must obtain a licence from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
Ant Group said in June it would be participating in the pilot stablecoin programme. JD.com has also said it would take part in the pilot, according to the FT.
PBOC officials advised against participating in the initial rollout of stablecoins over concerns about allowing tech groups and brokerages to issue any type of currency, the FT report said.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Ant Group, JD.com, PBOC, CAC and HKMA did not respond to requests for comment.
Stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a constant value, usually pegged to a fiat currency such as the U.S. dollar, are commonly used by crypto traders to move funds between tokens.
Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru, Editing by Franklin Paul, Michael Perry and Christian Schmollinger
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
In a recent announcement, EROAD downgraded its fiscal 2026 revenue guidance, reported up to NZ$150 million in North American asset impairments, and outlined a renewed focus on Australia and New Zealand alongside scaled-back North American activities.
This shift comes as challenges in North America, including a key customer loss and slower enterprise sales, prompt the company to reallocate resources toward emerging opportunities in its core markets.
With the company’s refocus on electronic road user charging in Australia and New Zealand, we’ll examine how this shapes EROAD’s investment narrative.
Trump’s oil boom is here – pipelines are primed to profit. Discover the 22 US stocks riding the wave.
To be comfortable holding EROAD shares right now, you’d need conviction in its ability to execute a fresh regional pivot following major shortfalls in North America. The company’s reset, moving growth focus and resources to Australia and New Zealand’s road user charging opportunities, marks a fundamental shift in its investment story. While previous catalysts centered on U.S. expansion and telematics innovation, the market’s sharp reaction to asset impairments and guidance cuts suggests near-term growth drivers will depend on how quickly EROAD can win or retain clients and secure contracts linked to new charging regimes in its home markets. The immediate risk is execution: reestablishing momentum in Australia and New Zealand is not guaranteed, and the heavy NZ$150 million impairment underscores uncertainty over any future North American contributions. The recent share price drop signals these risks are now firmly front and center for investors. On the flip side, the road to recovery in core markets comes with its own hurdles investors need to keep front of mind.
Despite retreating, EROAD’s shares might still be trading 43% above their fair value. Discover the potential downside here.
NZSE:ERD Community Fair Values as at Oct 2025
Seven members of the Simply Wall St Community estimate EROAD’s fair value anywhere from NZ$1.20 to NZ$4.96 per share. This wide range reflects big differences in expectations around EROAD’s growth rebound in Australia and New Zealand after its US setback. Comparing such varied outlooks with the company’s new strategic focus, it pays to see how your own view lines up.
Explore 7 other fair value estimates on EROAD – why the stock might be worth over 2x more than the current price!
Disagree with this assessment? Create your own narrative in under 3 minutes – extraordinary investment returns rarely come from following the herd.
A great starting point for your EROAD research is our analysis highlighting 3 key rewards and 1 important warning sign that could impact your investment decision.
Our free EROAD research report provides a comprehensive fundamental analysis summarized in a single visual – the Snowflake – making it easy to evaluate EROAD’s overall financial health at a glance.
These stocks are moving-our analysis flagged them today. Act fast before the price catches up:
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Companies discussed in this article include ERD.nzse.
Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com
The combination of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and lenvatinib (Lenvima) elicited promising progression-free survival (PFS) outcomes in patients with uveal melanoma who were both HLA-A*02:01–negative and –positive with a manageable safety profile, according to findings from the phase 2 PLUME trial (NCT05282901) presented at the 2025 ESMO Congress.1
The study met its primary end point in both patient cohorts, with an observed PFS rate of 31.8% at 27 weeks (95% CI, 13.9%-54.9%) in patients who were HLA-A*02:01–negative and naïve for treatment with tebentafusp (Kimtrak). In patients who were HLA-A*02:01–positive and were pretreated with tebentafusp, the PFS rate at 27 weeks was 60.7% (95% CI, 40.6%-78.5%).
“It was observed in phase 3 studies of tebentafusp2 that treatments administered after tebentafusp might display improved activity compared [with] historical data,” said Manuel Rodrigues, MD, medical oncologist at Institut Curie and presenter of the PLUME data.1
The combination of lenvatinib and pembrolizumab “showed encouraging activity, especially in patients previously treated with tebentafusp, suggesting potential synergy between these treatments,” Rodrigues added.
Regarding safety, the overall profile was consistent with prior trials involving pembrolizumab and lenvatinib. There were no treatment-related deaths. With lenvatinib, 76% of patients held the dose, 26% had dose reductions, and 4% discontinued. With pembrolizumab, 22% of patients held the dose and 4% discontinued.
The most common any-grade treatment-related adverse events were fatigue (81.8% in the tebentafusp-naive cohort vs 69% in the pretreated cohort), hypertension (77.3% vs 69%), diarrhea (45.5% vs 65.5%), hypothyroidism (45.5% vs 65.5%), arthralgia (40.9% vs 58.6%), cytolytic hepatitis (40.9% vs 58.6%), mucositis (45.5% vs 41.4%), dysphonia (31.8% vs 44.8%), and abdominal pain (27.3% vs 44.8%).
While the findings were promising, Rodrigues urged caution when interpreting the results, due to the small sample size and single-arm design. Rodrigues noted that biomarker analyses and real-world comparisons were ongoing to further refine patient selection.
What Was the Design of the PLUME Study?
PLUME was an academic, monocentric, single-arm phase 2 trial conducted at the Institut Curie in Paris, France.A total of 51 patients who were naïve to immune checkpoint inhibitors were enrolled and split into 2 cohorts by HLA-A*02:01–negative (n = 22) and –positive/pretreated with tebentafusp (n = 29).
Treatment consisted of pembrolizumab 200 mg intravenously every 3 weeks for a maximum of 35 cycles and lenvatinib 20 mg orally daily until progression. Chest, abdomen, and pelvic CT scans and liver MRIs were mandatory every 9 weeks. The primary end point was 27-week PFS (after 9 cycles).
What Was the Rationale for the PLUME Study?
As Rodrigues explained in his presentation, uveal melanoma has a unique biology to melanoma of the skin, with one-third of patients developing metastases and over 90% of those patients developing liver metastases. The current median overall survival (OS)is about 20 months.
Tebentafusp, a bispecific TCR–anti-CD3 fusion protein targeting gp100, was the first therapy to improve OS in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma; however, the benefit is limited to patients who are HLA-A*02:01–positive, which is about 45% of patients. Further, checkpoint inhibitors like pembrolizumab have shown limited efficacy due to low mutational burden and an immunosuppressive microenvironment.
The rationale of adding lenvatinib lies in its VEGFR/FGRF blockade that can normalize vasculature, reduce tumor-associated macrophages, and enhance T-cell infiltration. The combination of lenvatinib and pembrolizumab has shown promise in endometrial and renal cancers, where the combination has outperformed monotherapy.
DISCLOSURES: Rodrigues declared personal financial interests with Immunocore, GSK, AstraZeneca, and Abbvie; institutional financial interests with Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Daiichi-Sankyo; and nonfinancial interests with Merck, which provided product samples for the PLUME trial.
REFERENCES:
1. Rodrigues M. PLUME: A single-arm phase II trial of pembrolizumab plus lenvatinib in metastatic uveal melanoma (mUM). Presented at: 2025 ESMO Congress; October 17–20, 2025; Berlin, German. Abstract LBA58.
2. Nathan P, Hassel JC, Rutkowski P, et al. Overall Survival Benefit with Tebentafusp in Metastatic Uveal Melanoma. N Engl J Med. 2021 Sep 23;385(13):1196-1206. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2103485.
The considerable ownership by private companies in Master Tec Group Berhad indicates that they collectively have a greater say in management and business strategy
MTPC Sdn Bhd owns 55% of the company
Insiders own 30% of Master Tec Group Berhad
Trump has pledged to “unleash” American oil and gas and these 15 US stocks have developments that are poised to benefit.
Every investor in Master Tec Group Berhad (KLSE:MTEC) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are private companies with 55% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).
Individual insiders, on the other hand, account for 30% of the company’s stockholders. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it’s not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies.
Let’s delve deeper into each type of owner of Master Tec Group Berhad, beginning with the chart below.
See our latest analysis for Master Tec Group Berhad
KLSE:MTEC Ownership Breakdown October 19th 2025
Institutional investors commonly compare their own returns to the returns of a commonly followed index. So they generally do consider buying larger companies that are included in the relevant benchmark index.
Less than 5% of Master Tec Group Berhad is held by institutional investors. This suggests that some funds have the company in their sights, but many have not yet bought shares in it. If the company is growing earnings, that may indicate that it is just beginning to catch the attention of these deep-pocketed investors. We sometimes see a rising share price when a few big institutions want to buy a certain stock at the same time. The history of earnings and revenue, which you can see below, could be helpful in considering if more institutional investors will want the stock. Of course, there are plenty of other factors to consider, too.
KLSE:MTEC Earnings and Revenue Growth October 19th 2025
We note that hedge funds don’t have a meaningful investment in Master Tec Group Berhad. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is MTPC Sdn Bhd with 55% of shares outstanding. With such a huge stake in the ownership, we infer that they have significant control of the future of the company. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 19% and 3.6% of the stock. Kim San Lau, who is the second-largest shareholder, also happens to hold the title of Senior Key Executive.
While studying institutional ownership for a company can add value to your research, it is also a good practice to research analyst recommendations to get a deeper understand of a stock’s expected performance. As far as we can tell there isn’t analyst coverage of the company, so it is probably flying under the radar.
While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Company management run the business, but the CEO will answer to the board, even if he or she is a member of it.
Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group.
Our information suggests that insiders maintain a significant holding in Master Tec Group Berhad. Insiders have a RM346m stake in this RM1.2b business. This may suggest that the founders still own a lot of shares. You can click here to see if they have been buying or selling.
The general public, who are usually individual investors, hold a 10% stake in Master Tec Group Berhad. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders.
Our data indicates that Private Companies hold 55%, of the company’s shares. Private companies may be related parties. Sometimes insiders have an interest in a public company through a holding in a private company, rather than in their own capacity as an individual. While it’s hard to draw any broad stroke conclusions, it is worth noting as an area for further research.
I find it very interesting to look at who exactly owns a company. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. For example, we’ve discovered 1 warning sign for Master Tec Group Berhad that you should be aware of before investing here.
Of course this may not be the best stock to buy. Therefore, you may wish to see our free collection of interesting prospects boasting favorable financials.
NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.
Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content?Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
