Looking past e-invoicing  

AFTER being focused on delivering solutions for e-invoicing in the last two years in Malaysia, Autocount Dotcom Bhd is going back to the drawing board.

This time, it plans to leverage on artificial intelligence (AI), automation and regional expansion as its next phase of growth.

The company is best known for developing accounting, payroll, point-of-sale and cloud-based business management solutions for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

It transferred its listing to the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia in February this year.

With the requirements for e-invoicing solutions having somewhat settled down, chief executive officer and managing director Choo Yan Tiee says things have normalised, even in earnings.

The company’s first quarter ended March 31, 2026, saw a lower revenue of RM14.46mil compared to RM25.55mil in the same quarter last year.

Profit was also lower at RM4.86mil versus RM13.65mil a year ago.

The drop was due to the exceptionally high demand for the e-invoicing module in the earlier quarter. As demand normalised, earnings fell.

Historically, Autocount’s first year of strong growth was 2024, whereby revenue grew 46% and profit surged 51%. But financial year 2025 was even better, following the full impact of its

e-invoicing segment. Profits surged 58.2% to RM31.21mil, while revenue grew 24.6% year-on-year to RM75.49mil.

The e-invoicing mandate in Malaysia began phased implementation in August 2024, and Autocount’s Inland Revenue Board-compliant e-invoice solution became a key revenue driver as businesses rushed to comply.

“E-invoicing was a bonus for us, when it was announced, it was really a no-brainer decision for us to get in the game. It all depends on how fast you react to the market’s needs,” he explains.

The introduction of e-invoicing has also increased the usage of digital tools, which Autocount intends to leverage on.

Choo says one of the value-added services Autocount offers is EWA or Earned Wage Access, a financial service that lets employees access a portion of the wages they have already earned before their regular payday.

For Autocount’s human resource management solutions, Choo says there are roughly 300,000 employees from around 13,000 SMEs on their system.

“Our solutions are unique in the sense we can scale and adapt to what the market is looking for. So far, I have not seen any other product that can do this. AI has also been a big thing in our industry,” Choo says.

This is another reason why regional expansion is on the cards for the company.

At the moment, Malaysia is still its biggest market, contributing more than 80% to its topline, followed by Singapore and the Philippines.

“We’ve been able to scale the products to be very localised. Different countries have different requirements,” he says.

Autocount’s next target country is Indonesia.

Choo says that despite having a dealer there for the last 10 years, the company will only set up an office there this year.

“We’ve been studying Indonesia’s local requirements, it is a very large market so it is a challenge, but we are confident in penetrating it successfully,” he adds.

Autocount has been in the Philippines for about two years now, and business has been picking up steadily.

One of the advantages Autocount has in the Philippines is there are little to none direct competitors.

“They do not have a local dominant brand, most of them are foreign. This means products cannot be localised in the way we do it. We worked very hard to get their local authority endorsement on our softwares,” he says.

Meanwhile, Choo reckons the industry is slowly consolidating.

He says the company is on the lookout for new partners and will be open to mergers and acquisitions.

“We are looking for good partners, there are some industries where we have no expertise, like in warehousing. So we might acquire a company to be integrated into, and subsequently introduce warehousing software into the market,” he says.

A challenge they face is the same as so many others – talent.

Choo says one good programmer can override 10 regular programmers.

“One of the main reasons why we grew to where we are today is because one of the founders is a system architect and was the mastermind behind many solutions,” he explains.

Nevertheless, Choo is a firm believer that good talent is still out there.

“There is still plenty of room for talent to grow. Besides, we are not just an accounting solution provider, there are so many other things to do so we will definitely require all sorts of talent,” he says.

Thanks to the number of strategies keeping Autocount on its toes, Choo says the Middle East crisis has not impacted them hard. But as businesses struggle to keep up, it’s possible they could be indirectly affected later.

“We’d feel the impact if businesses close or stop investing in solutions like ours.

“So far, nothing has happened yet so we are remaining optimistic. This year, we’ve set a sales target of about RM60mil,” he says.

Their profit margins are sitting at more than 30% currently, and Choo is confident they will be able to sustain it.

Backing this is the company’s total liquid resources, comprising cash and short-term investments, which expanded to RM56mil.

The company has remained debt-free since its listing in 2023.

Today, the stock is trading at about 67 sen at a trailing 12 months price earnings multiple of 16.5 with a market capitalisation of RM366.1mil.

When Autocount went public in May 2023, its share price shot up from its offer price of 33 sen to hit a high of RM1.09 before closing that day at 75 sen.

In early 2025, Autocount’s share price started peaking again.

It hit a 52-week high of RM1.19 last May, going by Bloomberg data and indicating high expectations from investors, especially from the potential gains from e-invoicing.