Gamania Digital Entertainment Co (遊戲橘子), the Taiwan distributor of NCsoft Corp's "Lineage" online game, will begin trading its shares tomorrow after raising NT$733 million (US$21 million) from an initial share sale.
The company, which offered a 10 percent stake, sold 550,000 shares to Grand Cathay Securities Corp (大華證券), Capital Securities Corp (群益證券) and Jih Sun Securities Corp (日盛證券) at NT$90 each. Another 5.14 million shares were offered to the public at NT$133 a share.
Gamania is counting on its 1.6 million paying players in Taiwan who are hooked on the South Korean role-playing game to buy its other online games as it seeks new markets. The company plans to introduce its products to China, even though NCsoft is yet to announce its own plans for the world's most populous nation.
The seven-year-old company will from July sell its own two online games for the first time, as well four games made by South Korean companies.
The public offer, managed by Grand Cathay Securities Corp, is priced at 25 times the company's forecast NT$5.29 earnings per share this year, according to the prospectus. Gamania's net income rose six-fold last year to NT$293.3 million in the year-earlier.
Sales almost tripled to NT$1.2 billion from NT$408 million.
Gamania competitors in Tai-wan include Soft-world International Corp (智冠科技), Acer TWP Corp (第三波) and Softstar Entertainment Inc (大宇資訊).
Still, its expansion plans may not be enough to garner investor interest in a market where the key TWSE index has dropped nearly a 10th since the beginning of April.
"The sentiment in the IPO market is weak nowadays, so we will only be watching to see how Gamania performs when it starts trading," said William Wang, who helps manage NT$700 million of Taiwan equities at International Investment Trust Co (
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