Malaysian Billionaire Francis Yeoh Expands Cement Footprint With Purchase Of Singapore’s NSL

Forbes, July 25, 2024

By Yessar Rosendar

Malaysian billionaire Francis Yeoh is expanding his cement operations to Asia, Europe and the Middle East by acquiring Singapore-NSL from hotel tycoon Ong Beng Seng, betting on the booming construction demand in these markets.

Under the deal, Yeoh’s YTL Cement will buy 81% of NSL from 98 Holdings—an investment holding company jointly owned by Malaysian-born Ong and his brother-in-law, businessman Peter Fu—for S$228 million ($169 million), YTL said in a statement released this week. Ong and Fu will be exiting NSL two decades after they wrestled control of the company, formerly called NatSteel, from billionaire Oei Hong Leong, son of the late Indonesian tycoon Eka Tjipta Widjaja.

YTL Cement will buy the rest of NSL at S$0.75 per share, and pay about S$53 million for the remaining 19% stake. NSL fell 1.4% to close at S$0.73 on Thursday.

NSL’s precast concrete business in Malaysia and Singapore will complement YTL’s existing cement operations and provide synergies between the two companies. At the same time, NSL will provide YTL access to new markets in Dubai and Finland, where NSL recently increased its prefabricated bathroom production capacity by 42% to 10,000 units.

Both companies have been benefiting from the booming construction demand in Malaysia and Singapore, where global chip manufacturers and technology companies have been stepping up investments in advanced manufacturing facilities and cloud infrastructure. YTL Corp, in partnership with billionaire Jensen Huang’s Nvidia Corp., is building a $4 billion artificial intelligence-driven data center in the southern Malaysian state of Johor, about 20 kilometers north of Singapore. Both countries are also building hospitals, schools and infrastructure facilities.

Francis and his six siblings have a combined net worth of $4.7 billion, ranking seventh on the Forbes Asia list of Malaysia's 50 richest that was published in April. As the eldest, Francis manages the conglomerate founded in 1955 by his late father, Yeoh Tiong Lay. Beyond the cement business, YTL also has interests in hotels, property, and utilities. The group owns PowerSeraya, Singapore's second-largest power plant by revenue and the Ritz-Carlton in Kuala Lumpur.

Meanwhile, Ong, who is managing director of Singapore-listed Hotel Properties, has a net worth of $1.7 billion, which he shares with his wife Christina Ong. Fu and his family have a net worth of $1.2 billion.