Online Classics Plc saw its share price climb 228% on its London Alternative Investment Market debut Monday. The UK-company with pretensions to be a streaming media player in the mould of Yahoo! Inc’s broadcast.com web site finished the day with a market capitalization of 23.7m pounds ($37.5m) with a share price of 148p, a premium of 214.6% on its opening price, making for of the best first day performances from a net stock this year.
Online intends to start webcasting live and on-demand video and audio of classical music, opera, ballet and theatre toward the end of January. There will apparently be 1,000 hours of opera alone on the web site within two months of launch. The directors reckon the advent of ADSL technology, scheduled for roll-out in the UK next April, and cable modems, will give consumers the speed needed to appreciate streaming media and drive traffic to the site.
CEO Chris Hunt, an Emmy award-winning TV producer, told ComputerWire the company is still working out the finer points of its delivery system, and hasn’t decided between RealNetworks Inc and Microsoft Corp streaming software. We haven’t done the deal yet, he said, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we went with Microsoft. It seems like it will be better suited to our needs.
