Stock manipulation: Asya Infosoft

2 September 2015

Moneylife

The share price of Asya Infosoft jumped 1085% in just about 17 months despite negligible profits

Asya Infosoft (Asya) has been involved in several failed business activities in the past. Formerly known as Saya Housing Finance, it was into providing home loans. In 2008, Saya was suspended for not complying with the listing agreement. In the following year, the name of the company was changed to Asya Infrastructure & Tourism. A few years later, in 2013, after acquiring Ideal Systems, the company decided to pursue information technology (IT) services. As per its website, Asya undertakes software development, web designing and web development for its clients. However, it had revenues of less than Rs1 crore in each of the past 12 quarters and negligible profits. But the share price of such a company has jumped 1085% in just about 17 months. From a low of Rs7.80 on 10 March 2014, the price shot up to Rs92.45 on 21 August 2015. Asya is trading at a PE (price to earnings) of 159 times (past four-quarter trailing earnings). Are the investors extremely bullish or is this another pump & dump operation? Asya had an average daily trading turnover of about Rs1.49 lakh in CY2013, with about 53 trades each day. In CY2014, the average trading turnover jumped to Rs3.69 lakh and the average number of daily trades increased to 94. From January 2015 up to mid-August 2015, the trading volume averaged over Rs11 lakh a day with nearly 160 trades each day. It has just about 2,000 shareholders. At the time of going for printing, the stock got suspended on BSE for penal reasons.