Asean expansion

Talks are rife that Mr. DIY, a regional home improvement retailer that started its operations in Malaysia, is preparing for an initial public offering that could raise between MYR 1.5 bn and MYR 2.1 bn (Malaysian ringgit, USD 362 mio - USD 508 mio) for the company after a shareholder hinted at the possibility at the close of 2018.
Brahmal Vasudevan, the founder and chief executive officer of Creador, a private equity firm that owns an 18 per cent stake in the retail chain, said a listing could happen late this year.
"A company we have invested in called Mr. DIY ... will likely undertake an initial public offering in late 2019," he divulged in a December 2018 article that came out in The Edge Financial Daily.
Subsequent news reports citing sources mentioned that it was possible that only the Malaysian operations of the retail chain, which has 500 stores in the country, would go public.
The Edge Financial Daily, in an 8 April 2019 article, quoted fund managers as saying that Creador, which invested in Mr. DIY in 2016, is now looking to exit. The same article quoted market sources as saying that Mr. DIY's listing could be pushed back pending a more satisfactory valuation of the company.
The IPO would bode well for the company's plan to expand its footprint around South East Asia. Mr. DIY already has more than 750 stores across six of the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean): Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, Indonesia, Philippines, and Singapore. It plans to have 1 000 outlets by 2020, with the expansion focused on Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, according to reports.
"Our vision is to become the largest home improvement retailer in Asia Pacific and also to create more value to our consumers by providing good quality products, value for money, and holding true to our company motto, 'always low prices'," Andy Chin, Mr. DIY head of marketing, said in an October 2018 video interview posted on Youtube.
In a separate report, he was quoted as saying that "we feel that our home improvement retail business model, offering a variety of goods at affordable prices, is suitable for better business growth in the country [Malaysia] as well as the Asean market."
Mr. DIY, which started in 2005, has crafted quite a narrative in the last three years with its rapid expansion around South East Asia. The company has more than 8 000 employees serving 180 mio customers annually throughout all the stores, it said. The directly-managed outlets are tenants…