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Technology Stocks : Softbank Group Corp -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mact who wrote (2786)	12/22/1999 12:22:00 PM
From: mact	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 6018

stories like this are abit disturbing...ipo floats of 1M belittle liquidity and the offering prices of inet issues in japan will do little to promote the inet revolution for the individual investor in japan...pricing new issues at $30K to $100K is ludicrous...it is the masses that will take 9984 to the next level and not the institutional players imo. Japan's high-tech stock market makes flying start Reuters Story - December 22, 1999 05:40 Jump to first matched term By Ritsuko Ando TOKYO, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Japan's unquenchable thirst for high-technology shares drove two young Internet stocks sharply higher on Wednesday when they made their debut on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's new "Mothers" market for high-growth start-ups. The surging prices, which mirrored the first-day performance of many high-tech initial public offerings (IPOs) in the United States, ensured a spectacular start for Mothers -- short for Market of the High-Growth and Emerging Stocks. The demand for the two shares was so strong that they failed to change hands as sellers decided to hold on to their stock. Both issues ended bid-only after rising by their daily limit. Internet Research Institute Inc , an Internet service business, surged to 20.70 million yen ($202,000) against an initial public offering (IPO) price of 11.7 million. Bids for Liquid Audio Japan , an affiliate of U.S. Internet music company Liquid Audio Inc , doubled to 6.0 million yen from its IPO price of 3.0 million. Both had offered one million shares. "They could both remain bid-only for the rest of the year," said Masaru Yamano, general equities manager at Taiheiyo Securities. "There are just so few shares and such strong interest." In an effort to cool the two stocks, the TSE announced after the market closed that buyers would have to pay for the shares in cash when they are eventually traded. The exchange also banned securities firms from trading the shares on their own account. Other capital-hungry start-ups are expected to follow the trail blazed by the pair. More than twenty firms, mostly high-tech and Internet-oriented businesses, have applied for a Mothers listing. All of them are Japanese. ASIA OPENS ITS ARMS TO HIGH-GROWTH STOCK MARKETS Mothers is not Asia's first high-tech bourse and will not be its last. Hong Kong last month launched the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) and next year will see the debut of Nasdaq Japan, which is being set up by Japan's Internet investor Softbank Corp and the U.S. National Association of Securities Dealers. Softbank is the most glamorous of Japan's glamour stocks, rising 12-fold this year. But investors have piled into an array of other shares too, convinced that Japan's economy is on the mend and as eager as high-tech fans in Europe and the United Statess to make risky bets on potentially high-return businesses. For instance, Itochu Techno-Science , which was floated on the TSE on December 14 at 22,000, finished on Wednesday at 64,000 yen. TSE officials acknowledged that the lofty price per share of Wednesday's debutants would put them beyond the reach of most investors. "It's true the price for both stocks is very expensive, and we are hoping to offer a wider price range to can attract various clients," one official said. "But as a stock exchange, we're not in the position to put limits on offering prices." The listing requirements of the Mothers market are more lax than on the first and second section of the TSE. Companies can go public regardless of the company's age, and firms do not necessarily need to be profitable. Liquid Audio, for example, forecast on Wednesday that its current loss would widen in the year to June 30, 2000, from 284 million yen the year before. Instead, the key listing criteria is strong growth potential. Firms are also required to report quarterly results, as in the United States, and not every six months as ordinary TSE firms do. ((Tokyo Equities Desk +81-3 3432 9404