Netbay plans IPO ahead of MAI listing

Its management highlighted its team’s great experience and its position as Thailand’s first company to provide a “software as a service” (SaaS) platform to respond to business needs, facilitate and speed up business processes and reduce red tape and costs associated with e-commerce. The management expressed confidence of strong and sustainable business growth.

Montree Sornpaisarn, co-chief executive officer of Maybank Kim Eng (Thailand), said the Securities and Exchange Commission had approved the filing made by Netbay for an IPO of 40 million ordinary shares, which will represent 20 per cent of its authorised and paid-up capital after the IPO.

Netbay’s current registered capital stands at Bt200 million, divided into 200 ordinary shares with par value at Bt1 each, and paid up at Bt160 million. 

The IPO will increase the number of shares by 40 million, and the funds raised will then be used to finance business expansion and as working capital.

Netbay is a developer of integrated software, e-logistics trading and e-business solutions, serving through private cloud computing on a 24-hour basis as a single business information gateway for business-to-government (B2G), business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) transactions.

Netbay CEO Pichit Viwatrujira-pong said the company had been in business for more than a decade, developing a comprehensive range of e-logistics trading and e-business service software and solutions for all parties at the upstream (customers), midstream (gateway) and downstream (organisations with which customers exchange transaction data) levels. 

It provides an omni-channel connectivity gateway that covers data processing and backup, operating systems for data exchange, data networking and security systems, which facilitate and enhance the speed of customers’ business processes and reduce red tape and the costs associated with electronic, paperless data exchange, he said. 

Unlike many other information and communications technology companies that are either software integrators or software houses, Netbay says it is a local pioneer in the SaaS market, offering software online on a “better, faster, cheaper” basis. 

Allowing customers to eliminate the high costs of software acquisition and avoid royalty and annual fee payments, as well as facilitating and speeding up data exchange through its online, paperless system and enabling them to control costs effectively through its use-based or monthly payment plan, the products generate decent, constant revenue streams for the company. 

To win more customer confidence in the products, it says it also places great importance on privacy, service integrity and security, market and technology development and cost reduction.

Netbay currently has three core business segments. 

First is e-logistics trading, which involves paperless, electronic data exchange in connection with goods and transport (both domestic and cross-border), for example e-commerce document/data exchange and customs clearance data exchange.

The second segment is e-business services, which involve reporting of customers’ transactions with financial institutions. 

The third core interest is projects and other activities, that is, development of internal information-technology systems for organisations.

“We believe that with the policies of both public and private organisations to adopt online/paperless data-exchange systems and the government’s ambition to develop a digital economy to enhance the country’s competitiveness, our businesses will generate strong regular revenues in the long run and will grow through expansion of our network to cover new business areas and increase the number of users of online transaction services,” Pichit said.