Digital TV device maker prefers listing in New York to tap technology funds Beijing Novel-Tongfang Information Engineer, a digital television device maker partly controlled by China's Tsinghua University, plans to raise as much as US$400 million in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, according to sources. The company is one of the mainland technology companies favouring a listing on the NYSE or Nasdaq over Hong Kong for the higher valuations that they can secure from the large number of technology funds that invest there. Trina Solar, which raised US$98 million from a Nasdaq float last month, has seen its shares rise 27 per cent since then. The shares traded at US$23.48 on Thursday. Beijing Novel was set up in 2001 as a joint venture between Tsinghua Novel and Tsinghua Tongfang, a Shanghai-listed information and biotechnology company. Tsinghua Novel is owned by Tsinghua University and Hong Kong's Novel Group, a diversified conglomerate with property, textile and chemical units. Novel Group's president is Chao Kuang-piu, the founder of Hong Kong Dragon Airlines. Tsinghua University also holds a stake in Tsinghua Tongfang's parent Tsinghua Holdings, which in turn holds a 33 per cent stake in Tsinghua Tongfang. Beijing Novel's secretary of the board, Liang Zhangwen, said he was not aware of any fund-raising plan. The firm mainly makes set-top boxes, digital television video recorders and cable-television data transmission hardware. It counts state-run television broadcaster China Central Television, the Central Satellite Television Transmission Centre and the Broadcast and TV Monitoring Centre at the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television as clients. Beijing Novel may pin its business prospects on the country's digitalisation. The government plans to convert the country's 120 million cable analogue users to digital by 2015, according to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. 'It's [a business] ahead of its time and consumers aren't really ready for it,' Fulbright Securities general manager Francis Lun said. 'It doesn't exist anywhere in the world.' Despite that, investors have been betting on companies in the industry. Shares of DVN Holdings, the mainland's largest digital television set-top box maker, have soared 84 per cent over the past year. They closed at HK$2.58 each yesterday, down 21 per cent from a 52-week high of HK$3.28 hit on December 5. The shares rose last year after Citic Group, the mainland's biggest investment firm, signed an agreement that could see it become DVN's largest shareholder. Citic has the right to take up to 25 per cent of the company while DVN has the right to sell devices to the 21 mainland cable networks that Citic maintains a 49 per cent stake in. Motorola, the world's second-largest mobile-telephone maker, holds an 18.5 per cent stake in DVN.