Investors flee from Hikari and Softbank
'Mr Shigeta has put together a good business model in the past. The question is, will the market give him a second chance?' -- Analyst Thomas Rodes, on Hikari Tsushin's boss
JAPANESE DOT.COMS
TOKYO -- The wheels may be coming off Japan's Internet bandwagon if an investor stampede out of the two biggest dot.com concerns provides any indication, analysts say.
Investors nursing a sense of betrayal are voting with their feet as they desert Hikari Tsushin, Japan's biggest mobile telephone shop operator which had promised big returns from its Internet investments.
Softbank, Japan's most famous Internet investor with more than 300 interests worldwide, has less to worry about as its share price takes a beating.
Nevertheless, the wider concern is that both companies' strategy of planting seed capital in small high-tech start-ups and harvesting the rewards when they list could unravel.
"Investors are realising that Net-related businesses will not expand as rapidly as thought, and that it's only in the remote future that they will become profitable, if at all," said Sakura Institute of Research analyst Masanori Fukunaga.
The troubles of Hikari Tsushin, whose share price has crashed nearly 80 per cent from its record high in February, deepened last Friday when Nextel, a start-up which it has a major investment, saw its listing approval cancelled. Its stock closed last week on sell-indication at only 48,800 yen.
Softbank's share price, meanwhile, is down nearly 60 per cent from its record close, set four days after Hikari Tsushin's on Feb 18. -- AFP
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