Follow the Money #2: EPF sold Tenaga for three weeks, then bought 35 million shares in one day

Follow the Money, Issue #2. Changes in EPF's disclosed substantial shareholdings on Bursa, read straight from the filings. A weekly series.

Last week we showed EPF trimming six major holdings, with CIMB the only clean addition. We went back to the same seven names for 18 to 31 July and summed every acquisition and disposal in EPF's Section 138 filings. Six of the seven carried on in the same direction. One turned around.

TENAGA: EPF filed a disposal every trading day from 20 to 24 July. On 27 July it filed two purchases on the same day, 20,000,000 shares and 15,000,000 shares, and kept buying through the 31st. Net for the fortnight: about 19.7m shares bought, roughly RM287m at current prices, after selling about 25.9m in the first half of the month.

THE TRIMS CONTINUED:

• Public Bank: about 30.8m sold, roughly minus RM159m, after 28.1m in the first half
• Sunway REIT: about 29.8m sold, minus RM67m, close to three times the 10.4m of the first half
• Pavilion REIT: about 13.3m sold, minus RM24m, up from 7.8m
• Alliance Bank: about 8.0m sold, minus RM38m, up from 5.8m
• RHB Bank: no EPF filings at all this window, after 20.7m sold in the first half
• CIMB: about 8.9m bought, plus RM71m, still the only big bank being added

THE BANK SELLING BEYOND THE ORIGINAL SEVEN:

• Maybank: about 29.7m sold, roughly minus RM324m, the largest ringgit reduction in the window. EPF filed a disposal on all ten trading days.
• AMMB: about 19.2m sold, roughly minus RM134m
• Hong Leong Bank: about 6.2m sold, roughly minus RM138m

Across the second half of July, EPF reduced five banks and added one.

WHERE THE BUYING WENT: the largest additions were SD Guthrie at about 37.2m shares (plus RM245m), Press Metal at about 34.3m (plus RM271m) and Johor Plantations at about 33.0m (plus RM67m). The largest reduction by share count was Sime Darby Property, about 36.4m.

HOW TO READ THIS: these are small changes against EPF's total holdings, and EPF runs many managers on different mandates, so one fortnight is not a verdict. Valuation, mandate rebalancing, index weights and liquidity could all play a part. The disclosures show what was traded, not why.

METHODOLOGY: for each stock we summed every disclosed acquisition and disposal in EPF's Section 138 substantial-shareholder filings from 18 to 31 July 2026. That counts actual trades, so share-base changes such as subdivisions do not distort the totals. Ringgit values are approximate equivalents at current prices, not trade proceeds. We reviewed 377 filings across 66 companies; 65 companies parsed completely and 1 was unavailable and excluded from every derived claim. These are substantial-shareholding disclosures under the Companies Act 2016, which apply at or above 5 percent and to changes while a substantial shareholder. They do not show every EPF position or every EPF trade. Source filings are on Bursa under each company's announcements.