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MORPH Labs Inc., an information technology company,
has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission its
application to sell shares to the public for the first time this
quarter.
In a statement, the Cebu-based IT
company said it will sell up to 99.4 million new shares to the
public or about a third of its issued and outstanding capital stock
through an initial public offering (IPO). It expects to raise about
P500 million at an offer price of between P4.50 and P5.80 per share.
“The proceeds from the IPO will
be used to partially finance the company’s global expansion, which
is an inevitable development given the rising demand for SaaS
applications globally,” Winston Damarillo, Morph Labs chairman,
said. SaaS refers to software-as-a-service infrastructure and
solutions provision.
Last week, the company secured a
$1.5-million pre-initial public offering investment agreement from
AO Capital Partners Ltd. As lead investor, AO Capital brought in CSK
Venture Capital Co. Ltd., the venture capital arm of Japan-based CSK
Group.
Morph Labs, which leverages
virtual infrastructure and open source technologies, recently
launched the Morph AppSpace, an on-demand Platform as a Service (PaaS)
that provides developers with a complete solution for the
deployment, delivery, and ongoing management of web applications in
an enterprise-quality setting. The PaaS developed by Filipino
engineers allows developers and independent software vendors to do
away with expensive and time-consuming system administration and
maintenance tasks.
Unlike traditional software,
which is installed on computer hard disks, SaaS applications are
delivered to users over the Internet and licensed for use by
customers on a subscription basis. According to Morph Labs, SaaS is
expected to capture 23 percent of the $120-billion US software
market two years from now due to lower IT capital and operating
costs for users that attract small- and medium-size businesses.
Late last year, Morph Labs
launched its first application, Morph helpME, which assists in the
development of help and training sites. The company has at least 120
Morph AppSpace subscribers, 185 Morph helpME subscribers and over
400 Morph eXchange subscribers.
--Likha C. Cuevas-Miel
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