WITH the market showing signs of stabilising, now may be a good time to buy into some of the more recent initial public offerings. There is no denying that a lot of the recent issues have been trash and deservedly dumped by the market. Others have merely been unfortunate bystanders, swept away with the outflowing tide of money and now waiting to float back on to shore. One such stock strongly favoured by more than a few analysts is the recently listed China-Hongkong Photo Products Holdings. The company is the only authorised distributor of Fuji products in Hong Kong, China and Macau. The risk is that it is too dependent on earnings from one licence which could be removed by Fuji of Japan. But its success in building Fuji's market share from almost nothing to more than 50 per cent in Hong Kong gives it a strong position and considerable negotiating power with the Japanese giant. It has the licence since 1968. Yesterday the stock got a boost when its share price jumped 16.4 per cent to close at $1.56. But Archie Hart, head of research at Crosby Securities, reckons the stock has further to go. The reason is that current pricing does not account for expected growth in sales of film in China. China-Hongkong Photo is in the throes of setting up its own distribution system on the mainland and in establishing its own version of the one hour photoprocessors common in Hong Kong and the West. Among other things, it plans to replicate its Fuji Circle Scheme in China. As long as cameras remain popular in China and incomes grow, the demand for film should also remain strong. According to Crosby Securities, statistics showed the average purchase of film in China was 5.3 rolls of film per 100 persons in 1992, compared with 320 rolls in Japan.
