International Herald Tribune
02-09-1999
Long dominated by small manufacturing companies, Taiwan's stock market is set to enter a new era as regulators lift the barriers that prevent software companies from listing.
Software developers hope that publicity from the first initial public offerings, expected within three months, will help attract venture capital into the industry by providing a clear exit strategy.
For investors, three companies now passing the final regulatory hurdles offer a variety of different plays on technology, the Internet and Taiwan's economy.
-
Ulead Systems Inc., one of Taiwan's few software developers with a majority of sales overseas, will be among the first to list.
Specializing in Windows-based, consumer-oriented software for touching up photographs, digital image manipulation for Internet sites and digital video editing, the company made its international debut with the Photostyler program in 1990.
The program, licensed to Aldus Corp. in the United States, grew to occupy a 20 percent market share and became the largest challenger to Adobe Photoshop in the Windows-based digital imagery software market. The program was killed after Adobe's merger with Aldus, but not before Photostyler brought Ulead $10 million in sales and $6 million for the sale of the program to Adobe.
About half of the company's sales, which grew 35 percent last year to $18 million, came from retail and bundled sales of Photoimpact, the company's latest professional standard image editing program.
This growth came despite a scanner price war that has slashed equipment prices by 60 percent over the past year and reduced the manufacturer's budgets for bundled software.
Photo Express, a consumer-oriented photo touch-up program, accounts for 20 percent of sales, and MediaStudio Pro, a digital video-editing program, represents 15 percent. While company sales are geographically diverse, the work force is largely based in Taiwan.
Bundled software sales in Europe and Japan make up about 55 percent of sales revenue, off-the-shelf sales in the United States account for 40 percent, and the remaining 5 percent is in Taiwan.
Eighty percent of the company's 230 employees work in Taiwan, where software development is done. The remaining workers are spread among sales and research offices in California, Germany and Japan.
-
Also set to list on the market is Eten Information Systems Co., a 12-year-old company that started by developing Chinese-language operating systems but now focuses on software for small consumer devices.
Eighty percent of the company's 800 million Taiwan dollars ($24.8 million) in sales last year camefrom Intermessenger, a handheld device introduced a year ago that allows Taiwan's stock puntersto receive real-time market dataand news headlines via pager signals.
Similar in size to a personal digital assistant, the Intermessenger costs an initial 5,900 dollars plus a monthly fee of 800 dollars. The product is run in partnership with Chunghwa Telecom Co.
The company, which has 240 employees, also sells Dr. Stock, Taiwan's first real-time Internet stock information program for Windows.
-
Another software company preparing to list, Ares International Co., divided most of its $10 million in sales last year among specialized software for Taiwan banks, a document-management product developed for the government under contract and consulting work to install the logistics programs of Oracle Corp. in Taiwan.
About 10 percent of its sales came from consumer-oriented programs sold into the highly competitive markets for Chinese character recognition as well as Internet site-translation software.
The president of Ares, Harry Yu, said sales could grow nearly one-third this year because of increased installation work for Oracle software and more sales of banking software.
Mr. Yu, whose company now employs 200, said the money raised from the stock sales would be invested in research and development and acquisitions of other software companies.
1999 Copyright International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com
No comments:
Post a Comment