Phonecard player Tel.Pacific to raise $5m in IPO

Stuart Corner
Monday, 28 May 2007 12:34

IT Industry - Deals

Tel.Pacific's focus (and that of most of its competitors) is remote stored value (RSV) cards that allow callers to make calls up to the value of the card by dialling a local call access number, or a 1800 number, and entering a PIN number. The value of this card is maintained in the network of the provider, rather than on the card as in the case of  payphone cards like Telstra's.

According to Paul Budde Communication, the payphone card has seen a significant decline with revenue per annum in Australia dropping from $70 million to $20 million dollars from the late 1990s to mid 2000.

There are approximately 20 service providers in the RSV calling card market and,  according to Paul Budde Communication (quoted in the Tel.Pacific prospectus) the key players in order of importance, are: • Telstra (which owns approximately 95 percent of the payphone card market and approximately 20 percent of the RSV card market); • gotalk (Telecorp); • Hello (Tel.Pacific); and • World Telecom.

Tel.Pacific says it expects to sell 667 million call minutes during the 2007 financial year. Its IPO opens on 4 June 2007 and closes on 29 June 2007.