"All About" Japan to go public

on JASDAQ

[bill]

The All About [allabout.co.jp] site in Japan is a takeoff on About.com [about.com] which started as The Mining Company. All About Inc. is a subsidiary of Recruit Co. They provide roughly the same fare as offered on About.com. Their guides research and review a variety of topics and provide links to sites of interest to the Japanese market, in Japanese.

After the listing, Recruit Co. will have an equity stake of 50 percent in the firm and Yahoo Japan becoming its second-largest shareholder with a 37 percent stake. The company is expected to announce a 20 percent increase in its pretax profit of 360 million yen ($3.2 million) in the year through March 2006.
article [financeasia.com]

[bill]

Looks like the IPO is off to a great start...

AllAbout IPO Soars 727% [redherring.com]

Japan's answer to U.S. information portal About.com makes a splash in its first day of trading in Tokyo.

U.S. investors in AllAbout.com Wednesday toasted the public market debut of the Japanese version of the popular U.S. information portal About.com, which saw its shares soar 727 percent over the offer price.

The company's stock closed up to ¥2,150,000 ($19,500) on Japan's Jasdaq after pricing at ¥260,000 ($2,360). The stock bolted out of the gate, beginning trading at ¥2,020,000 ($18,300) per share.

[martinibuster]

Read this article at TechDirt [techdirt.com]. Red Herring got the name of the company wrong, among some other details.

Red Herring also fails to mention that the VC investor in the company who they quote just happens to serve on the board of Red Herring.

Reportedly it's a 1.2 Billion dollar company now. Bubblicious.

[bill]

LOL. Great find martinibuster. I skimmed right over the incorrect URL in the article.

I think a lot of people are expecting a market correction on this one. The All About Japan site has never been all that valuable a property in my eyes from their very inception. They certainly don't generate much traffic for my sites. ;)