On April 13, 2007, the stocks of Pacific Online Systems Corporation, a Philippine company that supplies lottery machines and with their inaugural public offering this year, improved about 50% that day to 13.25 pesos per share from their initial IPO equivalent of 8.88 pesos.
The increase of the stocks of the Pacific Online Company pushed the Philippine Stock Exchange to halt the trading in the shares. The rules of the Philippine Stock Exchange states that trading will stop if the price of a particular stock moves up 50%.
Willie Ocier, the President of Pacific Online, said that their successful company public offering is one of the reasons why the company is growing rapidly. He said that the faith of the investing public in their company is what is pushing the company forward.
Philippine Stock Exchange President, Francis Lim, said that he is confident that the successful initial public offering of the company will encourage companies to follow the example set by the company.
Some of the companies that are going ahead with their IPO are the National Reinsurance Corporation of the Philippines, the Phoenix Petroleum Corporation, the GMA Network Incorporated, Anchorland Corporation and Cebu Air Inc. The company is the lone lottery system provider for the Visayas and Mindanao.
The company also expects to earn around 170.7 million pesos from 50.5 million pesos in 2006. Pacific Online plans to install 500 additional lottery terminals this year to their existing 1,100 lottery terminals. The company will also be introducing new games to the gambling market across the nation, like Power Lotto, Keno and EZ 2.
The Power Lotto Game is similar to the normal lottery game, but it is priced at 50 pesos per tickets and the jackpots that are offered are worth 50 million pesos. EZ 2 is a lottery game similar to the local "jueteng", which only needs 2 numbers, while the keno game is a continued lottery game.
Government owned Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office is thinking of their new product offerings. Ocier commented that Keno will be offered by the second half of 2007. Pacific Online plans to build 200 Keno sites across the countr,y which will cost the company 30 million pesos.
Thursday, April 19 , 2007
John M. Thorpe
