Asiaone 1-42
Asiaone 1-42
Asiaone 1-42
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This summary highlights certain information found in greater detail elsewhere in this Prospectus. In<br />
addition to this summary, we urge you to read the entire Prospectus carefully, especially the discussion<br />
of risk of investing in our Shares under “Risk Factors”, before deciding to buy our Shares. References<br />
in this Prospectus to “AsiaOne”, “Group”, “we”, “our” and “us” refer to AsiaOne and its subsidiary.<br />
OVERVIEW OF THE GROUP<br />
PROSPECTUS SUMMARY<br />
We started our operations in 1995 as the Multimedia division of SPH. We were incorporated on 23<br />
July 1999 under the Companies Act as a separate private limited company in Singapore, under the<br />
name of “SPH.com Pte Ltd” with an issued share capital of $2.00 comprising two ordinary shares of<br />
$1.00 each. We changed our name on 25 August 1999 to “AsiaOne Internet Pte Ltd” and on 16<br />
December 1999 to “SPH AsiaOne Pte Ltd”. We became a public limited company on 8 February<br />
2000 and changed our name to “SPH AsiaOne Ltd”. Our issued share capital as at the date of this<br />
Prospectus is $50 million comprising 1,000,000,000 ordinary shares of $0.05 each. Changes in our<br />
share capital from the date of our incorporation and the date of this Prospectus are set out in the<br />
“General Information on Our Group – Share Capital” section of this Prospectus.<br />
Our website was launched in June 1995 as the Internet version of SPH’s publications. The Business<br />
Times was the first to go online, followed by The Shipping Times, Lianhe Zaobao and The Straits<br />
Times. By late 1995, our website registered approximately 60,000 pageviews each week, of which<br />
approximately 60% was from outside Asia.<br />
In 1996, we included other publications, namely, The New Paper and Berita Harian as well as other<br />
regional newspapers and magazines on our website. The range of services was expanded to include<br />
Business Centre and Entertainment. AsiaOne.com gained good reception and the number of times<br />
our website was accessed increased to approximately 4 million pageviews a month.<br />
Keeping abreast of the virtual shopping trend, our e-commerce infrastructure was launched in October<br />
1997. We also launched other new services such as SingaporeConnect and REALink in 1997.<br />
By late 1998, our virtual shopping mall had 60 shops. Pageviews continued to grow, increasing to<br />
approximately 25 million pageviews a month by end 1998.<br />
At the start of the new millennium, we re-positioned ourselves to be the premier Internet player in<br />
Asia, targeting the English speaking audience with our English language portal, AsiaOne.com, and<br />
the Chinese language market with our Chinese language portal, Zaobao.com. Our objective is to be<br />
a dynamic, multifaceted news, information, lifestyle and e-commerce site. We want to reach English<br />
and Chinese speaking Internet users around the world with our focus on Asian products and services,<br />
and businesses and consumers looking for total solutions in Asia. We aim to be the premier Asian<br />
gateway/portal.<br />
Our Group currently operates as an Internet portal under the domain names of “www.asiaone.com”<br />
and “www.zaobao.com”, which are based on the fundamental concepts of content, community and<br />
commerce. We had approximately 58 million pageviews per month as at April 2000. Through our<br />
parent company, SPH, and in cooperation with other content providers, we offer a broad range of<br />
content, a directory of websites, e-commerce and auction capabilities, and value-added personal<br />
services such as free e-mail accounts and a homepage builder. We are dependent on our parent<br />
company, SPH, for news content.<br />
Prior to 1 March 2000, SPH did not charge us for the news content and neither did we charge SPH<br />
for hosting its online newspapers. However, with effect from 1 March 2000, SPH charges us royalty<br />
and licensing fees for its English, Malay and Tamil news content while we charge SPH a hosting fee<br />
for hosting its online English, Malay and Tamil newspapers on our websites. Our wholly-owned<br />
subsidiary Zaobao.com, has a similar arrangement with SPH in respect of its Chinese content with<br />
effect from 1 May 2000. The nature of our dealings with SPH is described in greater detail in the<br />
“Interested Person Transactions” section of this Prospectus.<br />
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