Listing at thirty, raising money exactly once (1998)

What a single raise tells you

Obic’s listing does not fit the usual pattern of a company that goes to market because it needs money. In a business with no factories and no inventory, where employees design the customer’s processes on site and deliver the company’s own software, growth does not require large sums each time it happens — and in fact no borrowings have been carried since the listing. In that light the 600,000-share offering of January 2000 was less a working-capital raise than a way to create enough float to move from the second section to the first. The designation came two months later.

If one thing had to be named as what listing bought, it is proof of identity for a company entrusted with its customers’ accounting and personnel. Replacing a core system is a relationship measured in decades, and the buyer wants to know the supplier will still exist in ten years. Having passed disclosure and audit, and carrying a price in the market, was something a direct sales force with no distributors could put on the table at the first meeting. With 600,000 shares taken up at ¥61,740 in January 2000, Obic’s business with the market as a source of cash was finished.