Lacklustre launch as few queue for CK Life
There were no mile-long queues, no jostling on choked pavements and the police did not have to be called.
The lacklustre launch of CK Life Sciences International's share offer yesterday was a reminder of how far in the past the hi-tech and Internet boom lies.
The CK Life Sciences offer evoked inevitable comparisons with the last time a Li Ka-shing-sponsored technology concept company came to market in February 2000.
Then, Tom.com created a frenzy as hundreds of thousands of would-be investors sought to buy a piece of a start-up Internet portal backed by the SAR's richest man.
Yesterday, piles of application forms for Mr Li's biotechnology venture lay untouched in the branches of receiving banks in Central. Small queues were spotted at some branches in Kwun Tong, but indifference appeared to be the general attitude.
One fund manager said he was not surprised by the less than enthusiastic response to the offer, which took place in vastly different market conditions from the Tom.com offer.
'For institutional investors, we have ample choices [in the biotech field] outside Hong Kong with companies providing more promising prospects,' he said.
Hong Kong had only about 20 listed biotech firms, most listed on the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) - which meant they were still not profitable, he said.
CK Life Sciences' shares will debut on the GEM board on July 16.
The fund manager said he believed the new share offering would be fully subscribed but the question was by how many times. Tom.com's share offer was a record 669 times oversubscribed.
CK Life Sciences' association with Mr Li was the focus of market attention instead of its technology, the fund manager said.
Francis Leung Pak-to, Asia chairman of Salomon Smith Barney, the issue's global co-ordinator, said the company had placed extra printing orders for white forms (for retail investors) and yellow forms (for brokers).
'We do not have an estimation of how many forms were distributed but about one million forms were made available,' he said.
The company faced a further challenge to its credibility yesterday after an industry association questioned its claim of a breakthrough in yeast-based technology.
CK Life Sciences chairman Victor Li Tzar-kuoi said previously the company had achieved a technological breakthrough in developing microbes to perform a specific function without the introduction of foreign genetic material into the cells.
However, the founding chairman of the Hong Kong Biotechnology Association, Lo Yuk-lam, said the process being employed by CK Life Sciences was 'low tech' and had nothing to do with genetic engineering.
The company's target market for its fertiliser, NutriSmart, was also highly competitive, Mr Lo said, adding that it was also time-consuming to educate farmers to try a new product.
