Internet and web design group LibertyOne said on Tuesday it has received a
number of restructuring offers.
"Offers include proposals to recapitalise LibertyOne by way of a
placement of ordinary shares and the sale of assets," it said in a statement
to the Australian Stock Exchange.
LibertyOne earlier requested a trading halt pending an announcement, ahead
of a directors' meeting on Wednesday.
Shares in LibertyOne closed on Monday at AU$0.06, down from its peak at
AU$2.28 in October 1999. It has struggled to generate revenues and retain
senior executives.
In other financial news, shares of Hong Kong telecom and Internet giant
Pacific Century CyberWorks fell 6.35 percent to a new 10-month low in early
trade on Tuesday, before staging a partial recovery.
"There is talk that hedge funds have been selling short the stock," one
broker said.
PCCW should continue to see selling pressure on concerns about a decrease in
its recurrent revenues following the setting up of three joint ventures
under its pan-Asian telecom alliance with Telstra, said Herbert Lau,
associate director of research at Celestial Asia Securities.
"Investors are worried that PCCW's cashflow position is not as strong as
before and that will inflate its cost to refinance its merger debt," he
said.
PCCW said on Friday that it would give Telstra 60 percent control of its
mobile phone business, inject its global wholesale business into a 50/50
Internet backbone joint venture and set up an intranet data centre with
Telstra.
PCCW said it would get US$3.56 billion in cash from the alliance, helping it
reduce the debt the company took on to help finance the takeover of Cable &
Wireless HKT completed in August.
PCCW took out a US$12 billion loan to part finance the deal of which about
US$3 billion has been repaid from cash reserves. With the money from the
Telstra deal, PCCW should be able to reduce its debts to around US$5.45
billion, analysts said.
The company said on Monday night that it was unaware of any specific reason
for the recent volatility of its stock.
