quote.bloomberg.com rsion=marketslong99.cfg
Singapore's Pacific Internet First-Quarter Profit Doubles
Singapore, May 12 (Bloomberg) -- Singapore's Pacific Internet Ltd., Asia's first Internet company
to trade in the U.S., said its first-quarter profit more than doubled as it signed on more
customers.
Profit doubled to $1.7 million, or 14 cents a share, from $720,000, or 7.3 cents, a year earlier.
That beat an IBES International Inc.'s forecast of 10 cents a share. Sales rose 29 percent to
$11.7 million from $9.1 million.
Pacific Internet, commonly known as PacNet, said its dial-up customers rose 50 percent to
217,014 from 144,852 a year earlier. It set aside $720,000 to match an offer by rival SingNet, the
Internet unit of Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., which absorbed phone charges for its
customers when they're online. ''We countered head-on SingNet's price cut through its toll
absorption, and our customer base is still growing,'' said Chan Wing Leong, PacNet's chairman.
He warned, though, that ''this year should see a squeeze in margins due to increased
competition and expansion costs.''
PacNet, which operates in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines, may buy one or more
Internet service providers in Australia this year, it said. Other markets it's expanding into are
India, Korea and China.
Investors have been upbeat about the company, along with other Internet stocks traded in the
U.S. Its share price soared four times from its offer price of 17 on Feb. 5. It closed Tuesday at 66
1/4.
Still, analysts say it must do more to stay ahead. ''Pacific Internet is a plain vanilla Internet
company,'' said David Leow, associate director at HSBC Securities (Singapore) Pte. ''If it can
move successfully up the chain by getting in e-commerce and becoming a content provider,
certainly you can justify higher valuations.''
PacNet is a unit of SembCorp Industries Ltd., Southeast Asia's largest civil engineering
company.
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