Weekly Sharing #May. 13

-Financial markets expect the Fed to start its easing cycle in September. A handful of economists believe the first rate cut will come in July.

-Event to watch: 15th May US Core CPI, US Crude Oil Inventories, 16th US Initial Jobless Claims & Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index

-local market capitalization hit a record high of RM2 trillion, with the benchmark index of FBM KLCI surpassing 1,600 points for the first time in two years.

-Event to watch: 17th May MY Current Account, Overall Net Capital Flow & GDP data

I believe all Malaysian known Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) is the largest electricity utility in Malaysia. With their core business of providing electricity to the country's businesses, homes and industries, they are a key contributor to Nation building. But the question is, was the recent NETR favourable to Tenaga National Berhad?

In short, the NETR (National Energy Transition Roadmap) is outlining Malaysia's efforts towards achieving a sustainable and inclusive energy system that planned by the Minister of Economy Rafizi Ramli while most of the FDI (foreign direct investment) company such as Intel & Microsoft and request to have a ESG-friendly or ESG collaborative companies before they setting up their company in Malaysia which a country with a certain level of industrial skills and multi languages advantage.

After understanding what NETR is, let's now look into how it impacts the business of Tenaga Nasional Berhad. Based on Tenaga 2023 annual report, you may see some clues as Tenaga introduced the green lane pathway in 2023 to fast track the on-boarding process and significantly reduce the time taken for connecting electricity to data centres.

As at April 2024, they had been manged to complete the power supply connection to 11 data centres. (Refer to the picture below)

While based on their outlook stated in Tenaga annual report, they saw a remarkable surge in electricity demand from data centres from the recent AI waves, and they had received a total of up to 63 applications while they just manged to complete the power supply connection to 11 data centres.

Tenaga will also support their expansion with initiatives like the Green Lane Pathway to expedite electricity connection for those centres’ application and going to build.

In conclusion, at this current stage as Tenaga still maintain the continued execution of plan such as “Green Lane Pathway” they may derive certain benefits from helping them to set up cleaner energy such as solar powered panel to those MNC who wanted to set up factory/ data centres in Malaysia.