General

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 21 (Bernama) — Censof Holdings Berhad (“Censof” or the “Group”), a technology holdings company specialising in financial management software solutions is pleased to announce that the Group has successfully completed the acquisition of a 51% stake in Cognitive Consulting Sdn Bhd (“CCSB”) on 20 January 2022.

On 20 December 2021, the Group entered into a share purchase agreement to acquire the equity interest in CCSB for approximately RM3.7 million with a profit guarantee scheme.

“We are excited to include CCSB as part of our efforts to solidify our digital technology business segment, which will inevitably enhance our revenue and profitability moving forward. By utilising CCSB’s Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology, Censof would be able to elevate its current customers’ processes, allowing them to digitise and adopt cloud-based solutions,” said Ameer Shaik Mydin, group managing director of Censof.

He added, “We believe our investment in CCSB will also enhance our synergy in providing Industrial Revolution 4.0 (RPA) services to our existing customers in government and commercial sectors. This is in line with the National Digitisation Strategy.”

CCSB is principally involved in the business of providing information technology consultancy and system integration services specialising in RPA. Essentially, RPA is a software technology that builds, deploys and manages software robots easily to emulate human actions interacting with digital system and software. CCSB is a technology partner with various world class technology providers such as UiPath and Deepread. Notable clienteles of CCSB include TM Malaysia, Pharmaniaga, Perkeso and POS Malaysia.

Pulau Pinang, 12 January 2022 – Censof Holdings Berhad (“Censof” or the “Group”), a technology holdings company specialising in financial management software solutions, today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary Century Software (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd (“CSM”) has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (“MoU”) with Universiti Sains Malaysia (“USM”) to promote, develop and establish internship training programme pertaining to accounting and information technology.

The objective of the programme is to provide a university-industry collaboration between CSM and USM. Both parties will additionally look at other training and academic linkages and cooperation that will be mutually identified and agreed upon. This MoU is signed for a period of three (3) years.

This university-industry collaboration is one of the deliverables under the contract that was awarded to CSM by USM in which CSM will provide its financial management solutions to USM, which includes the Government Resources Planning solutions. The said solutions will essentially facilitate seamless accounting processes to USM.

CSM is a technology company that offers state of the art financial management and business solutions to the government and commercial sectors in Asia-Pacific region. It also provides other customisable solutions in the areas of education, wealth management, enterprise analytics, application development and training solutions.

“We are excited to be part of the prestigious Universiti Sains Malaysia’s journey to equip its graduates when they enter the workforce in the digital era. The internship programme is a university-industry collaboration that enables CSM to empower USM students to be part of the growing digital economy in Malaysia,” said Ameer bin Shaik Mydin, director of Century Software (M) Sdn Bhd.

He added, “The signing of the MoU today to provide internship programmes to USM graduates is one of the deliverables under the MoU that was awarded to Century Software by USM earlier this month. In addition to developing on-the-site internship programme, our financial management solutions will also be offered to USM to ensure seamless accounting processes in place. Century Software constantly works on expanding its business offerings and develops new technology driven business solutions that cater to the rapidly changing digital economy. This university-industry initiative will help the country become a regional leader in the digital economy as we play our part in the country’s human capital development by building agile and competent digital skilled workforce.”

Meanwhile, YBhg. Profesor Dato’ Dr. Faisal Rafiq Bin Mahamd Adikan, USM Vice-Chancellor said, “USM truly appreciates the strategic partnership forged with Century Software in providing its financial management solutions to USM, which I believe will not only tremendously improve the access of real time data, but also in meeting the present and future business and technology needs. We are equally grateful for the internship training opportunity granted to our students from the School of Computer Sciences and School of Management.

“In terms of global employability index, we are thankful that we (USM) are currently the highest in Malaysia. Apart from producing aspiring leaders, we always emphasise on developing students with strong digital literacy and subject specialisation skills and knowledge. I also look forward for these students to fare excellently well and be able to secure full-time, permanent employment at Century Software upon the completion of their internship,” he added.

Kuala Lumpur, 15 December 2021 – Censof Holdings Berhad (“Censof” or the “Group”), a technology holdings company specialising in financial management software solutions, has accepted the Letter of Award from the Accountant General’s Department of Malaysia (“AGD”) for the “Perolehan Pembangunan Dan Pelaksanaan Sistem Terimaan Elektronik Kerajaan Persekutuan” or “iPayment” contract through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Century Software (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd (“CSM”).

The contract, valued at RM13.5 million, which includes a 6% sales and services tax involves the development and integration of a collection system by CSM for the AGD. This system is expected to be rolled out to all government agencies to facilitate cashless payments and collections by 2022 for all government services. The contract is for a tenure of 36 months, commencing from 15 December 2021 until 14 December 2024.

“I am pleased that we are making further progress in accelerating Malaysia’s digital transformation through our iPayment software solutions to be deployed by the government agencies. In line with the government’s agenda to migrate its agencies onto a fully integrated electronic payment and collection ecosystem, this marks another important step in achieving that milestone while strengthening Censof’s position as the leading provider of financial management software solutions to improve the efficiency and productivity of the government agencies’ system. We fully support the government’s efforts to boost economic growth and promote the digital economy to create a more inventive and technologically integrated society. I would like to express my gratitude to the AGD for their trust and confidence in Censof to execute the project. Censof has a strong track record in digital transformation in the government sector and is currently serving eighty-six government statutory bodies. We are invested and committed in the digital transformation programmes of the government as a preferred technology partner,” said Ameer Shaik Mydin, group managing director of Censof.

Kuala Lumpur, 7 December 2021 – CS Cloud Sdn Bhd (“CS Cloud”), a subsidiary of Censof Holdings Berhad (“Censof” or the “Group”) signed a joint venture (“JV”) agreement with Cloocus Co. Ltd (“Cloocus Korea”) at a ceremony held today at the Sheraton Hotel Petaling Jaya to facilitate the mutual sharing of expertise in the area of cloud services. The JV was attended by YB Tan Sri Datuk Seri Panglima Haji Annuar bin Haji Musa, Minister of Communications and Multimedia Malaysia. The JV agreement was signed by Mr. Kavinthraj Panneerchelvam, chief executive officer of CS Cloud and Mr. Steve Hong, chief executive officer of Cloocus Korea.

The JV, which will see a formation of a new entity named Cloocus Sdn Bhd (“Cloocus”), will develop and operate a ‘hyperscale (Microsoft Azure)’ cloud management in Malaysia, in addition to the Microsoft business, including MW: Modern Work and Biz Apps. Cloocus will be owned 50-50 by CS Cloud and Cloocus Korea with an initial injection of US$2 million, which is equivalent to approximately RM8.4 million. Cloocus Korea will bring into the JV its technical expertise, resources and assets while CS Cloud will provide local sales network, marketing and customer related activities as well as knowledge of the local culture and customer pattern behaviours.

CS Cloud was established in 2020. It provides cloud computing platform that offers wide range of private and hybrid cloud deployments for both the public and private sectors, which are currently being deployed by the Ministry of Transport, National Water Services Commission (SPAN), Malaysian Pineapple Industry Board, Amanah Saham Nasional Berhad (ASNB), State Secretary of Penang and Malaysian Medical Council.

Established in 2019, Cloocus Korea provides full cloud services such as pre-consultation service, build service, managed service, big data/analytics and smart work to drive digital transformation by migrating to Microsoft Azure. Earlier this year, Cloocus Korea was selected as a representative company of Korea at the “2021 Partner of the Year Awards” hosted by Microsoft. The award, given to each country’s partner, demonstrates the superiority in delivering Microsoft technology and solutions to customers throughout the year.
During the ceremony, Mr Kavinthraj Panneerchelvam, the chief executive officer of CS Cloud shared the importance of the JV. “We are making significant commitments to drive the digitalisation transformation forward in Malaysia, especially in the area of cloud services. There is no doubt that the global pandemic of COVID-19 has inevitably accelerated the digital transformation process. This collaboration is anticipated to open up businesses and growth opportunities for the digital economy and at the same time as a mechanism to boost foreign investors’ confidence to invest in our local businesses. Thus, this will further strengthen Malaysia’s foreign direct investment.”

Mr Kavinthraj added, “We share in the government’s plans to advance digital transformation. As such, our collaboration is in line with the MyDigital blueprint to transform Malaysia into a digitally driven, high-income nation and regional leader in digital economy. With the same vision under the “Bersama Malaysia” initiative, Microsoft is committed to support MyDigital ambitions and to empower Malaysia’s inclusive digital economy across the public and private sectors with the establishment of a data centre region in the Greater Klang Valley. We are in full support of the government’s efforts to drive growth and develop the digital economy to create an innovative and technology-integrated society. In a nutshell, this collaboration aims not only to support digital economy but to provide local entities with a more comprehensive cloud system. The enhancement of the digital economy also complements the recently launched “Keluarga Malaysia”, which was officiated by Prime Minister Yang Amat Berhormat Dato’ Sri Ismail Sabri bin Yaakob, formulated to achieve developed nation and high-income status as Malaysians of different backgrounds, cultures and beliefs stand united to develop the country.”

Chief executive officer of Cloocus Korea, Mr Steve Hong said, “One of Southeast Asia’s richest countries with developed public and financial markets, Malaysia is a country where the cloud journey can be fully accelerated with the establishment of Microsoft Azure Data Center this year. Utilizing its rich cloud services, Cloocus Group plans to pioneer and create a revolutionary impact on the Malaysian cloud market by joining hands with Censof Group, an established institution in the public financial market.”

According to global research and advisory firm, Gartner Inc, the worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 18.4% in 2021 to US$304.9 billion, from US$257.7 billion in 2020. Closer to home, the cloud computing market in Malaysia is expected to be worth US$3.7 billion in 2024, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 13% from 2020.

Censof’s Digitalisation Strategy Remains Intact

Key Highlights

• Year-on-year, Q2FY2022 revenue of RM22.8 million, up by 26.6%.
• Quarter-on-quarter, Q2FY2022 revenue increased by 8.4%.
• Quarter-on-quarter, PATAMI increased by 17.8%.
• 1HFY2022 revenue surged by 40.5%.

Kuala Lumpur, 10 November 2021 – Censof Holdings Berhad (“Censof” or the “Group”), a technology holdings company specialising in financial management software solutions, reported its second quarter results for the financial year ending 31 March 2022 (“Q2FY2022”) today.

Censof delivered a Q2FY2022 revenue of RM22.8 million, an increase of 26.6%, as compared to a year ago, which amounted to RM18.0 million. The improvement was mainly attributed to the higher revenue generated from the financial management solutions – government (“FMS – G”) segment as a result of the project milestone deliverables for the “Perolehan Pembangunan Sistem Pelesenan Kenderaan Perdagangan (i-SPKP)” contract, which was awarded to the Group by the Ministry of Transport on 10 March 2021. Notwithstanding the improved revenue, profit after tax and minority interest (“PATAMI”) was lower by 46.8% to RM2.1 million from RM4.0 million in Q2FY2021. The higher PATAMI in Q2FY2021 was primarily due to the recognition of an approximate RM2.1 million non-recurring gain on disposal of the short-term investment in Dagang Nexchange Berhad (“DNeX”).

Quarter-on-quarter, the revenue was 8.4% higher than Q1FY2022’s RM21.1 million. PATAMI grew by 17.8% as a result of the recognition of the gain on fair value adjustment on DNeX of approximately RM0.8 million and profit contribution from Censof’s new segment, known as Digital Technology, which will solely focus on evolving technologies such as internet of things, cloud computing and infrastructure, robotic process automation, peer-to-peer platforms, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

For the six months ended 30 September 2021 (“1HFY2022”), the Group achieved a revenue of RM43.9 million, an increase of 40.5% against its corresponding period last year of RM31.2 million. Overall, every business segment of the Group has improved. Revenue derived from FMS – G increased by 52%, followed by the wealth management solutions, up by 39.9% and the financial management solutions – commercial segment, by 19.6%. Despite the hike in its revenue, the Group posted a lower PATAMI of RM3.9 million for 1HFY2022, down by 67.9% from 1HFY2021’s RM12.1 million. The higher PATAMI in 1HFY2021 was due to the recognition of a non-recurring gain on disposal and a gain on fair value adjustment of DNeX’s shares which amounted to RM2.1 million and RM8.9 million respectively. Stripping of these two gains, the adjusted PATAMI for 1HFY2021 would have been RM1.1 million, whilst the adjusted PATAMI for 1HFY2022, excluding the loss of fair value adjustment of RM1.3 million would be RM5.2 million, 372.7% surge, in line with the higher revenue generated in the said period.

Censof’s balance sheet as at 30 September 2021 remained healthy with cash and bank balances, including fixed deposit and money market funds amounted to RM22.1 million. Net assets per share attributable to ordinary equity holders of the Company was 15.78 sen as at 30 September 2021.

“I am pleased with another set of resilient results for the second quarter. The Group’s strategy to leverage on the adoption of digitalisation within the government and commercial sectors remains intact. We have observed an increase in appetite for more comprehensive solutions particularly in the adoption of cloud-based financial solutions and applications both locally and overseas as well. We remain steadfast in our commitment to deliver exceptional financial solutions that cater to every customer’s customised requirements driven by our in-house development team and are confident in our ability to deliver long-term sustainable growth in the era of digitalisation.

On future prospects, we foresee that the RM200 million allocation in the Budget 2022 for the adoption of digitalisation among SMEs has indicated proactive measures by the government to push its business digitalisation agenda which stands to benefit Censof in the coming years. We continue to bid for commercial and government related projects and are delighted to announce that the Group was awarded a RM3.4 million contract named “Renewal Licenses for DBKL ePBT System Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur” for a period of 2 years, last week. We anticipate the project to contribute positively to our earnings, going forward,” said the group managing director of Censof, Ameer Shaik Mydin.

On a separate note, Censof is committed to create a sustainable future in its business, by pushing ESG components to the forefront. Given this, Censof, through its subsidiary, Tender Pintar Sdn Bhd (“Tender Pintar”) is exploring opportunities to work together with EMERGE. The latter is a National University of Singapore supported tech start-up that builds ESG-driven state of the art artificial intelligence (“AI”) procurement demand aggregators for social enterprises. Tender Pintar is a robust, feature rich end-to-end solution for e-Tendering, e-Procurement and e-Auction. With this AI procurement platform, Tender Pintar will not only capitalise on economies of scale, more importantly engage with suppliers and/or manufacturers, who are ESG compliant.

In today’s hyper-connected world, many organisations are embracing the idea of paperless offices. So with the highest safeguard, authenticity, convenience and low cost, cloud based digital signature services are becoming the choice for businesses to elevate workflow efficiency and deliver customer satisfaction.

Digital signatures allows the parties to check the authenticity and integrity of data, as well as preventing the signatory from being able to repudiate their involvement.

This technology allows signing processes and closing deals to be carried out on any device anytime and anywhere. Besides the rising corporate awareness about the benefits of using digital signatures, a further boost to adoption had come from the Malaysian Government’s Feb 2021 introduced MyDigital blueprint.

Going by the commitments and targets set out here, digital signatures are to be implemented across the entire public sector by 2025. This implementation would be beneficial to the Rakyat and businesses as one will no longer need to be physically present at any government department to conduct their business.

A September Top in Tech episode was on the topic of digital signatures and aimed to further raise awareness around the importance, applications and advancements of digital signatures with Sea Chong Seak, Chief Technology Officer of SigningCloud, Lo Nyan Tjing, CEO of MSCTrustgate and Nagendran Perumal, Chief Technology Officer of Censof Bhd as panellists.

Your Digital Signature and Electronic Signatures?

The differences between digital signatures and electronic signatures can often be confusing. An electronic signature is a blanket term for a broad grouping that includes digital signatures as a specific subset.Lo noted that digital signatures are more secure and tamper-evident. It encrypts the document, provides a timestamp and permanently embeds the information in it. If a user tries to commit any changes in the document then the digital signature will be invalidated. On the other hand, an electronic signature is similar to a digitized handwritten signature verified with the signer’s identity such as emails, corporate ID’s, transactions, and etc.An electronic signature is less secure since it does not have viable security features that can be used to secure it from being tampered with by other people without permission.

“Most of the projects and applications that utilize digital signature tend to be initiated by the government sector such as Malaysia Government Public Key Infrastructure (GPKI), eCourts and Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (LHDN). But when the pandemic swept across the world, more companies began to be more open in exploring digital signatures. As Covid-19 is here to stay, companies in Malaysia should embrace digital signatures to maintain and optimize their business operations, costs, productivity and efficiency,” Lo elaborates.

Meanwhile, Sea from Signing Cloud pointed out that the convenience of digital signatures inherently implies a faster turnaround time. Instead of involving multiple players, who will handle printing, signing, scanning and sending one side of the business transaction and the same set of actions on the other side, a digital signature authentication happens at the click of a button.

Plus, this type of signature has the same legal standing as a handwritten signature as long as it complies with the requirements of the specific regulation under which it was created. Naturally, it gives businesses the necessary agility, edge and helps to improve trust with their stakeholders.

“Malaysia has always been at the forefront in adopting technology. Based on MyDigital’s blueprint, 80% of all the government and public sector should be offering zero-counter operations and transactions via the internet within a two year timeframe. One of the strategies to achieve this objective is to adopt this Digital Signature technology,” Nagendran points out.
Key Takeaways
“I hope both small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and other big organisations in Malaysia adopt and integrate digital signatures in their business as it not only ensures smooth and efficient workflow operations but it also provides legal recognition,” Sea concluded.

“The MyDigital initiative is to transform Malaysia into a digitally driven nation. To achieve this the government will implement more e-services in both government and private sectors. Therefore, businesses should embrace digital signatures in their e-services as it eases business operations and aligns together with the government’s objective,” Lo said.

“Everyone embraces technology in their lives to make a specific task or way of life easier. Therefore, save time and make the signing process quicker by using digital signatures,” Nagen concluded.

Watch the replay of Top in Tech Episode 16 – Digital Signatures: Embracing New Practices here.

Petaling Jaya, 7 September 2021 – CS Cloud Sdn Bhd (“CS Cloud”) an indirect subsidiary of Censof Holdings Berhad is pleased to announce its official partnership with Nimbus Cloud Services (“Nimbus Cloud”), a pioneering cloud service provider in Malaysia. Through this partnership, four new cloud products, namely ‘Hijra Cloud’, ‘Kryo Cloud’, ‘Kami Cloud’ and ‘Askar Cloud’ will be introduced and provided to all existing and future clients of CS Cloud, which will essentially accelerate the ability to meet the growing demand of the digitalization transformation of the public sector in Malaysia.

This partnership between CS Cloud and Nimbus Cloud will experience exponential growth in opportunities from businesses, especially from the public sector that require cloud managed services. The four newly launched products will provide greater options to existing and potential clients to adopt cloud managed services in their businesses to better manage their day-to-day operations in facing the future of digitalization of businesses in Malaysia.

These cloud products, being flexible and scalable, are customisable to meet every businesses need. With security and reliability at the top of its benefits, these cloud products are highly resilient with the multi-layered security and ‘always-up’ environment. Focusing on clients from the public sector, CS Cloud and Nimbus Cloud products are hosted in Malaysia, which comply with data sovereignty laws.

This collaboration between CS Cloud and Nimbus Cloud aims not only to support digital transformation, but to provide businesses with a concrete defence against loss of productivity, business downtime and high consulting fees by leveraging on both parties’ IT expertise. CS Cloud and Nimbus Cloud proactively monitor and provide preventive maintenance to detect and eliminate computer problems which may result in loss of time and importantly lower cost.

“The business network and relationship between CS Cloud and Nimbus Cloud started several years ago. We have always admired Nimbus Cloud’s offering to businesses across the globe and how their solutions enable businesses to thrive. At this juncture, we have implemented our joint services and products to our government clients and we have seen positive outcome. At its core, this partnership with Nimbus Cloud will extend the reach of our Cloud products, making it more accessible for businesses with the variation and options that each product offers. As your business grows, we will help to ensure you have the right resources in place to sustain its development,” said Kavinthraj Panneerchelvam, chief executive officer of CS Cloud.

“The local and global business industries are undergoing sweeping changes in digitalization transformation. We are proud to partner CS Cloud as its achievements have been remarkable, constantly breaking new ground assisting businesses and providing relevant solutions. The debut of these four cloud products today is a gamechanger as it is a testament to Nimbus Cloud and CS Cloud’s dedication and reputation in the local Cloud service industry,” said Ungku Melewa Ahmad, chief executive officer of Nimbus Cloud.

For more information about this partnership and CS Cloud-Nimbus Cloud based products, please visit www.cscloud.my

PETALING JAYA, Aug 17 – Century Software (M) Sdn Bhd (“Century Software”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Censof Holdings Berhad and Jitterbit, an application programming interface (“API”) transformation company, strengthened their partnership with the pledge to continue advancing their joint technology to enable Malaysian government agencies and businesses to accelerate their digital transformation journey.

Century Software has been providing financial management and business solutions to over eighty government agencies and businesses for several years, using Jitterbit’s API technology for integration or middleware. Century Software and Jitterbit’s partnership has come a long way, through which Century Software was appointed as a Managed Service Provider partner, as well as the preferred re-seller for Jitterbit’s products and solutions. Century Software has successfully placed itself as one of the leading players in Malaysia’s digital/information technology industry specializing in government resource planning solutions.

An API enables interaction between data, applications and devices. It delivers data and facilitates connectivity between devices and programmes. API also allows applications to communicate with backend systems.

“Our technologies continue to advance, and so do our integrated solutions. These integrated solutions have greatly benefitted our clients as many of our clients have systems they would like to integrate,” said Dr Zainul Ariffin Harun, the chief executive officer of Century Software.

Dr Zainul added, “Conventionally, system integrations were done by scripting text files or via other manual ways. With Jitterbit, we are able to integrate our clients’ systems in a faster and more effective manner. We are now offering these integrated solutions to our clients as a package in which API will be in real time. Most of our clients, namely the government agencies are committed to use it.”

Marco Meisert, the director of Channel and Alliances for Asia Pacific of Jitterbit said, “The Malaysian government agencies have a strong requirement for Century Software’s solutions, which need to be tightly integrated with other core applications. Jitterbit’s easy-to-use integration platform allows these agencies to gain real time access to data and make informed decisions. Typically, government agencies are smaller in size and have a significant number of applications and back-end systems that need to be integrated with. Government agencies are also very particular about pricing as they have limited budgets available, which pose as a potential challenge to Century Software. Jitterbit’s flexible pricing model, as such, is able to address these pricing challenges.”

First quarter FY2022 Highlights

– Revenue surged by 59.5% to RM21.1 million.

– PBT from Financial Management Solutions for Government climbed 87.3% to RM3.2 million.

– PBT from Financial Management Solutions for Commercial and SME jumped more than 100% to RM2.7 million.

– ‘Cash and bank balances’, including fixed deposits of RM16.0 million.

– Gearing ratio – zero times

Kuala Lumpur, 11 August 2021 – Censof Holdings Berhad (“Censof” or the “Group”), a technology holdings company specialising in financial management software solutions, reported its first quarter results for the financial year ending 31 March 2022 (“Q1FY2021”) today.

For Q1FY2022, total revenue jumped 59.5% to RM21.1 million, as compared to the first quarter results for the financial year ended 31 March 2021 (“Q1FY2020”) of RM13.2 million. The improvement was driven by strong organic growth of the financial management solutions for the government (“FMS – G”) and the financial management solutions for the commercial and small-medium-enterprise (“FMS – C & SME”) divisions. For the quarter, revenue from FMS – G and FMS – C & SME divisions were RM12.8 million and RM6.8 million respectively, versus RM8.3 million and RM4.3 million generated a year ago. Correspondingly, the profit before tax of both divisions were RM3.2 million and RM2.7 million, translating to an increase of 87.3% and more than 100% respectively.

Despite the stronger revenue reported during the quarter under review, profit after tax (“PAT”) was 72% lower on a year-on-year basis, at RM2.3 million. This was mainly attributable to the loss on fair value adjustment of approximately RM2.05 million on short-term investment on Dagang Nexchange Berhad (“DNeX”), in contrast to a RM8.89 million gain recognised in the same quarter last year. Excluding the fair value adjustment on DNeX, the Group would have recorded a significant growth with an adjusted PAT of RM4.3 million in Q1FY2022, against the adjusted loss after tax of RM0.8 million in Q1FY2021.

Censof’s financial position as at 30 June 2021 remains healthy with cash and bank balances of RM16.0 million, from RM8.8 million a year ago. The Group has zero debt gearing ratio as its short-term borrowings of RM0.3 million were fully repaid in the quarter under review.

Commenting on the results, the group managing director of Censof, Ameer Shaik Mydin said, “Our first quarter financial results reflect a good start to the current year. Censof is still yielding results amid the overall economic landscape that have been challenging for everyone, which has proven our continuing effort and commitment to grow our business to greater heights. Our core businesses remain profitable, and we see strong adoption of digitalisation and implementations of financial management solutions across the Asian regions, particularly within the government and SME sectors. There are ample opportunities in the Malaysian e-government space as supported by the MyDigital blueprint. The Singapore government has also extended its enhanced support of up to 80% for existing enterprises schemes till end March 2022. Without doubt, these government initiatives present great prospects for the Group in the near future in the face of digital transformation that will further enhance Censof’s business offerings to achieve a better long term financial result. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, we are cautiously optimistic that this current financial year will be better than the previous years’ after the major re-alignment of the Group’s core businesses and the significant reduction in borrowings.”

In May 2021, Censof was announced as one of Microsoft’s partners to support and drive Microsoft’s “Bersama Malaysia” initiative to advance digital transformation in Malaysia. The partnership will see Censof’s Government Resource Planning (GRP) system to run and operate on Microsoft Azure platform to meet the evolving needs of the government and Malaysian public sector.