Half-hearted on Excelcomindo

After months of critics on the initial public offering (IPO) of the third largest cellular company PT Excelcomindo Pratama Tbk, its major shareholder (Telekom Malaysia) finally pledged to float more shares to public investors.

Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX) president director Erry Firmansyah told the press today that Telekom Malaysia sent a letter on Wednesday (January 11) to float 100 million Excelcomindo shares pending on market's apetite to absorb.

The 100 million shares equals to 0.014% from Excelcomindo's total shares of 7.137 billion and that would make the total floating shares of 0.07%.

As of December 31, 2005, Telekom Malaysia through its wholly-owned subsidiary Indocel Holdings controls 56.92% shares of Excelcomindo, followed by Khazanah Nasional Berhad (Malaysia government's investment arm) at 16.81%, PT Telekomindo Primabhakti 15.97%, and Asia Infrastructure Fund 10.14%.

Excelcomindo entered the stock market through public offering of 1.427 billion shares or 20% of its total outstanding shares on September 29, 2005. Just days after the listing, the number of shares owned by public investors dropped significantly to 0.16%.

For sure Excelcomindo is not the only listed company with such low percentage of floating shares as a result of half-hearted efforts from the stock market authorities. They're just focus on whether such companies already met the technical regulations, but they missed the whole idea of stock market as an economic democratization tool.

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