Translated material
Unknown leader
Microtest is preparing to be listed on NASDAQ
Summing up the decade of existence of the Ekaterinburg system integrator Microtest, its management for the first time yesterday revealed the company's turnover figures and announced its intention to list its shares on NASDAQ in 2002.Having told the Vremya Novostey newspaper that the company's turnover has already amounted to about $80 million this year, and is planned to reach $110 million in the future, the company's general director, Yuri Igoshin, explained its desire for transparency. On the one hand, Microtest is preparing to list its shares on the American electronic trading system NASDAQ, and for this the corporation must have a history of openness. On the other hand, the company understood the need for publicity, “so that business managers would not ask after Microtest’s victory in tenders what kind of company it is.”
Indeed, even when summing up the results of the “Computer Elite” competition, organized by the management of the Comtek exhibition and the ComputerPress publishing house, a misunderstanding arose. When leading suppliers of computer and network equipment named Microtest the best system integrator for 1999, the organizers of the competition decided to conduct the survey again, deciding that some kind of error had crept into the answers. But by this time the company, which opened its office in Moscow only two years ago, had completed several very large projects on orders from, for example, the Ministry of Railways and the Bank of Russia.
Thus, Microtest became the second Russian system integrator to announce plans for a public offering of shares (IPO). Back in 1996, one of the leaders of this market - the IBS holding - announced that it was harboring such plans. This September, its head Anatoly Karachinsky confirmed that the IPO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) should take place before the end of next year. It is expected that this year the holding's sales volume will be $250 million, which is approximately three times the expected turnover of Microtest.