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Investors throw support behind Australian Multimedia company

The $3 million float of Australia's largest multimedia company - Beam International Limited - has been met with an overwhelming level of enthusiasm from Australian investors with the offer likely to close soon.
Not underwritten at the time of announcement, the offer is now completely underwritten as a result of full support from all brokers involved with the float. The brokers are EPIC Securities, Johnson Taylor, Austock, Peake Lands Kirwan, Roach McIntosh and ANZ securities.
Beam International announced its initial public offering of 15 per cent of its shares on the Australian Stock Exchange on 15th August 1996. The float valued Beam International at $20 million, with 6 million shares being offered at 50 cents each.
It is the first multimedia development company to float on the Australian Stock Exchange.
According to Beam Chairman, Mr Alfred Milgrom, the strength of the market response has supported the Directors' view that Beam and Multimedia represent an exciting opportunity to investors.
"High technology, especially Internet-related stocks, have performed strongly in more mature internationally markets. Australia has the talent and ability to be the best in the world in multimedia development and investor support for companies like Beam will help realise this potential," Mr Milgrom said.
Beam International Limited is the holding company for the Beam Group, the leading Australian developer of software products for entertainment and 'edutainment' markets around the world.
The Group has been actively involved in the internationally multimedia market since 1980. It is the developer of such best-selling multimedia games and has distribution and licensing contracts with publishers such as Microsoft Corp., Sega of America and Electronic Arts, Inc.
The Beam Group reported revenues of $5.2 million for the 1995 financial year, 90 per cent of which was derived from export earnings. The forecast contained in the prospectus, dated 13th August 1996, projects revenue growth to $12 million in the 1997 financial year.
Mr. Milgrom said that the proceeds of the float would be used to support expansion of production and publishing of multimedia games for the world market.
"We know there is demand for high quality multimedia games. Our newest development, NBA Full Court Press is being universally acclaimed by all the US game magazines as the number one basketball title for the season. Microsoft has committed to publish it world-wide."
"We are actively work on meeting that demand and on developing products that provide interactive entertainment using the untapped potential of the Internet. We also aim to expand on our range of educational titles, CD-ROM games and Internet tools," Mr Milgrom said.
Beam International Limited was the first Australian company to release a prospectus on the Internet World Wide Web (WWW) in HTML format (the standard format for documents on the WWW). It can be accessed at: http://www.beam.com.au/prospectus.html.
Mr. Milgrom said that the company received a huge response to its on-line prospectus, with over 300 full copies being downloaded since the float announcement.
"As soon as we opened the World Wide Web site we were getting downloads of the prospectus at the rate of one every five minutes," he said.
This media release is produced by Beam International Ltd, the issuer of the prospectus dated 13th August and lodged with the Australian Securities Commission on 2nd August 1996.
Copies of the prospectus are available from the company and the brokers.
Note: The above URL is no longer valid, nor is the prospectus available
Press Release: 23rd August 1997