$KOSSAN / 7153 (KOSSAN RUBBER INDUSTRIES BERHAD) and $COMFORT / 2127 (COMFORT GLOVES BERHAD) had recently released their annual report. Let's take a look at what they're saying...

from COMFORT:

To refresh, Comfort's production capacity is around 6bn pcs p.a..

1. Compared to previous financial year, sales volume dropped 14% while ASP dropped 51%.

2. Manufacturing cost increased due to natural gas tariff increased approximately 59% in FYE2022 and minimum wage increased 25%.

3. Inventory written down to net realisable value and provision for slow moving inventories totalling around RM 10mil loss.

4. Opines that Recent ASP stabilization may indicate recovery is on the horizon.

5. They will defer any unnecessary CAPEX and conserve as much cash as possible.

6. To differentiate themselves, they will continue to R&D to develop more specialised gloves.

7. They also bought 6.1hectares of freehold land for RM 25.8 mil because they believe that it is "an opportune time to redeploy some funds towards capital assets which may provide an opportunity for the Group to benefit from potential capital appreciation in the future."


From KOSSAN's AR

1. Their plant for cleanroom products is actually located in Dongguan, China. I didn't know that.

2. Technical Rubber Products segment seem to be doing well; this division had secured some overseas construction projects to supply base isolation high damping rubber bearings for hospitals and buildings.

3. Cleanroom division is involved in cleanroom gloves, face masks, and wipes used mainly for E&E industry. The plant in China is not involved in making gloves, but more for secondary and value-added processing on the gloves produced in Malaysia.

4. Kossan expected the current oversupply situation to persist in the short-to-medium term, but the greater hygiene awareness would give a stronger outlook to the glove industry as a whole. More consumption will come from emerging economies with historically low glove usage as well as increased glove usage in non-medical sectors. They also note that there has been increased government spending in healthcare across the world to cater to the ageing global population.

5. Kossan is focusing on automating the production process, from processing to packing to reduce reliance on manual labour.

6. They expect FY2023 to be "severely challenging".

7. To that end, Kossan has also put on hold all their near-term expansion plans and will focus on improving efficiency on existing facilities.

8. Kossan believevs the next movement for the glove industry is expected to be one of specialist products; gloves to meet specific regulatory requirements of certain industries and applications. They will continue to invest in R&D to bolster their technology, which they believe will be a key differentiator in the future landscape.

9. Once the oversupply situation has corrected, they expect a strong rebound in demand.


Overall, nothing much new from what is already known. Most of everyone is halting expansion plans, which should help ease the oversupply situation somewhat.