Yehey! to join stock exchange

Local search engine and online content developer Yehey! Corp. will pursue its long-delayed listing of shares on the local bourse in March or April, the top executive of the firm’s parent company said late last week. The move will make Yehey! the third firm to list by introduction on the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) this year. "The target for the listing is end of March or early April, that is the new timetable that we are looking at," Edmundo P. Bunyi, Jr., president and chief operating officer of Yehey! parent Vantage Equities, Inc., told reporters. "We have been working on [the listing requirements] for over a year already. To my understanding, it is already in the final stages of approval in the PSE and the Securities and Exchange Commission," he added. Listing by introduction allows a widely held company to become part of the bourse without selling shares to the public for a year. Last January 21, Ayala-led Integrated Microelectronics, Inc. listed 1.137 billion common shares on the PSE by introduction. IPE-Game Ventures, Inc., the online gaming arm of listed information technology firm IPVG Corp., will list 33.545 million common shares on February 17. "What we will do is list by introduction and give the public the opportunity to invest and participate in a digital marketing plate, which is still not available in the market right now," Bunyi said. Yehey! first announced plans to list in 2005, but was delayed by the decline in the equities market and the global financial crisis of the past two years. Bunyi said government documentation had also held the firm back. For instance, Yehey! faced a delay in securing a clearance from the Bureau of Internal Revenue when it issued property dividends to shareholders. Yehey!, which has capital of about P200-P300 million, manages the search engine yehey.com and other Websites, and creates online marketing campaigns for corporate clients. It also earns from online ads. Meanwhile, the election season has brought additional clients to Yehey!. "I know for a fact that there have been a number of online digital marketing campaigns which [Yehey!] had been contracted to do," Bunyi said, without going into details. The company, which was formed in 1996 as Fiesta Online Corp., targeted P140 million in revenues last year. It claims to be the second most visited local Web site, generating more than 30 million page views a month. In June, Yehey! and Spanish firm Media Contacts SA formed joint venture firm Media Contacts, Inc., which will develop digital and online marketing campaigns for local and international companies. — Neil Jerome C. Morales, BusinessWorld