The long-serving group chief financial officer (CFO) of ComfortDelGro Corporation, Mr Choo Chek Siew, will retire at the end of next month after serving in the role for 16 years.
The 69-year-old veteran's last day at the company will be Sept 30, the transport giant said on Wednesday evening.
Replacing Mr Choo in the interim will be Mr Derek Koh Thong Hean, 53, who will be acting group CFO from October.
Mr Koh is the group chief special projects officer at ComfortDelGro, a role he has held for slightly more than one month since July 1. He oversees the integration of the group's acquisitions.
He was one of the candidates recruited as part of the group's succession plans endorsed by its remuneration committee.
Prior to joining ComfortDelGro, Mr Koh was CFO of offshore support vessel provider Miclyn Express Offshore from 2011 to 2019.
Before that, he was CFO at Rotary Engineering for two years.
Mr Choo was appointed as group CFO in July 2003.
He is responsible for ComfortDelGro's financial and statutory reporting, budgeting, financial control and policies, treasury and debt management, and taxation.
Mr Choo's retirement was announced shortly after the company released its second-quarter financial results earlier this week.
Net profit for the three months to June 30 edged up 1.2 per cent year on year to $75.9 million, with higher public-transport takings and contributions from new acquisitions offset by lower investment income, higher financing charges and unfavourable exchange rates.
Yesterday morning, KGI Securities (Singapore) maintained its "neutral" recommendation on ComfortDelGro with an unchanged target price of $2.77 based on 19 times of its financial year 2019 earnings per share.
Mr Joel Ng from KGI's research team said the transport group's earnings "could have been better had it not been for its forex (foreign exchange) exposure" to the Australian dollar, British pound and Chinese yuan.
"Although ComfortDelGro's share price has retreated almost 10 per cent since our last report, and as much as we like its healthy cash flow business and aggressive use of its strong balance sheet to expand via acquisitions, we believe risk-reward dynamics are still not favourable at the moment," he said.
Shares of ComfortDelGro closed up 2 cents, or 0.80 per cent, at $2.53 yesterday.
