Saigontel plans $252 mln stock market debut on Jan 18

HANOI, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Saigon Telecommunication & Technologies Corporation (Saigontel) said on Tuesday it planned the share trading debut of its $252 million initial public offering on Vietnam's main stock exchange later this week.

Ho Chi Minh City-based Saigontel would list all its 45 million shares on Friday at an initial price of 90,000 dong ($5.63) each, it said in a statement.

Vietnam allows shares to rise or fall up to 20 percent on their debut but imposes a trading band of 5 percent on subsequent trading days.

Saigontel, the 142nd firm to be listed on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, offers services ranging from from building infrastructure for industrial zones to trading in telecoms equipment and software to supplying Internet services.

On Monday, Vietnam's market regulators urged companies to delay share issues to avoid oversupply. The country's VN Index .VNI fell 3.8 percent to 808.83 points on Tuesday, extending a slide started in November when it fell below 1,000 points for the first time.

A member of Saigon Invest Group, which deals with banking, services for industrial zones, and information technology, Saigontel is 93.36 percent owned by 547 Vietnamese investors and nine foreign individuals who hold a combined 6.64 percent, its prospectus said.

Kinh Bac City Development Corp KBC.HN, the second-largest firm on the over-the-counter Hanoi exchange .HASTCI, is the top institutional investor of Saigontel, holding 18.89 percent.

"All production and business activities of Saigontel, both short-term and long-term, are attached to the telecoms and information technologies sectors", which are expected to expand 30 percent annually in the next few years, Saigontel said.

The company had a soaring net profit in 2006, with audited earnings hitting 19.04 billion dong ($1.2 million) compared with just 1 billion in 2005. It did not give a reason for the rise.

It said the economic growth of more than 8 percent a year has boosted demand for IT products and services, allowing Saigontel to project this year's net profit to more than double to 353 billion dong from 150 billion estimated for 2007.

One of Vietnam's 10 Internet providers, Saigontel said it would expand telecoms and online services, bring in more online games and target the fast-expanding mobile phone market.

More than half of Vietnam's 85 million people have telephones and 75 percent of them use mobile phones. Broadband Internet subscribers more than doubled to 1.2 million last year, from 500,000 in 2006, the government said.

In late March, Vietnam is schedule to launch its first telecoms satellite, Vinasat, which is scheduled to be fully operational in the second quarter and cut costs for telecoms firms and help them to raise sales. ($1=16,103 dong) (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Jan Dahinten)