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Gold/Mining/Energy : TS TELECOM (www.tstelecom.com): ASPIRING TELECO -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ciao who wrote (901)	11/21/1999 1:51:00 AM
From: geoff-t	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1762

Ciao: I also agree that TOM's move to do an IPO in Hongkong's GEM board is a brilliant move. I have been holding this dawg for a couple of years. There have been a few false starts in the past two years but this time I think it is for real. Here is what I think. 1. Management made its first move in July by asking Andrew Wong to step down to make way for Randy Hung who has Hongkong public co. experience. Randy was hired to spearhead the application for a GEM listing. Andrew stayed on as director to preserve his stock options but for all intents and purposes he is out of the loop. 2. We all agree the fundamentals of TOM are good, clean balance sheet, right products, and an ever growing market (think of those miles and miles of telephone and fibre optic cables that need to be monitored). The only problem area is investor relationship which was left to the CFO to handle regrettably on a part time basis. The two key men, the chairman and the president were never in town talking to brokers or doing the D & P shows. To make matter worse, in the past two years, China plays have fallen off the flavour of the month list with N.A.investors. 3. The move to the GEM board is an excellent tactical move taking full advantage of the pent up demand for technology stocks in Hongkong. As you know before the launching of the GEM board, the Hongkong Exchange was dominated by conglomerates (Hutchison Whampo), real estate developers (Cheung Kong) and banks (HSBC). Local investors have been looking for actions similar to what is happening in NASDAQ. The GEM board (BTW it is now being touted as the NASDAQ in Asia) is exactly what the doctor ordered. 4. As some of you have alluded to in earlier postings, investors in Hongkong will be more comfortable than the ones in North America in taking a position in TOM. In addition, being in their own turf, hopefully, the two key men will be more front and centre from now on. 5. You asked why the pricing of TSI was not based on blue sky potential. I do not think this is possible in light of the fact that TS is an established company with a track record of real earnings for many years. It would not be treated as a start-up for valuation purposes. 6. You also asked why 30% of TSI was offered. I believe the reason is that there is a floor limit of 25% to be offered to the public and I do not think management wants to offer more than 30%, at least not at the present price of HK$1.50. So I think 30% is a reasonable number. 7. Finally, just got the news that the first batch of GEM listing companies has received overwhelming responses from investors. Pine Technology (The MP3 player maker) was 65 times over-subscribed and China Agrotech (a bio-chemical company) was 59 times over-subscribed. I wonder what kind of action it is going to be like when they open for trading next week. Lets hope TSI will be hotly pursued as well. My bet is that the son will do better than the father, just like the NT/BCE scenario. What do you think? Where can I get my hand on some of the son's shares? As J.T. said earlier, right market + right time + right company = $$$$$$ Good luck all geoff