Archive for the ‘Australian Securities Exchange’ Category

Freelancer.com makes strong debut on stock market

Monday, December 2nd, 2013
Photo credit; Andreas Poike on Flickr

Photo credit; Andreas Poike on Flickr

Australian online freelancing website Freelancer.com made a strong debut on the ASX Nov. 15, surging by as much as 400%.

Freelancer raised about A$17.55 million by selling 35.1 million new shares or only 8.1 percent of the company, capitalising on a revival in the Australian IPO market and strong interest in non-resources stocks.

The stock was offered at A$0.50 per share and traded at A$1.60 by 0243 GMT, valuing the four-year-old Sydney-based company at A$697.6 million.

“On the face, the price is telling us that this float is underpriced,” said CMC Markets strategist Michael McCarthy.

“But because they only sold a small amount of the 436 million shares, that’s not a problem for them. What they’ve essentially done is establish a market value of this company.”

CEO Matt Barrie holds 46% of the tightly held business, a stake worth about A$321 million after Friday’s jump in the share price. Investment fund Startive Capital owns another 39%.

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Wotif issues net profit downgrade

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

Brisbane-based online travel accommodation provider Wotif issued a net profit after tax downgrade to between A$50.5 million and A$51.5 million for the 2013 financial year, some of which was attributed to its Asia Web Direct domain names being affected by recent Google ranking criteria changes.

Wotif was started in 2000 by Graeme Wood and has $1.161 billion in revenue.

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iSelect debuts, stumbles on ASX

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

iSelect, an Australian online insurance comparison company, made the opposite of a splash when it listed on the Australian Securities Exchange recently. It started at A$1.85 per share but fell and closed at A$1.56 per share, losing 15.7 percent of its market capitalisation of A$479.3 million in the process.

Reasons given for iSelect’s poor performance were that its technology was “not groundbreaking” and it already has strong competition in its field with even more competition possible.

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