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Wotif you netted a cool $150m?
Great investments are made long before everyone else can see them...
Pardon our spelling, but any way you look at the numbers in the float of Brisbane based accommodation retailer WOTIF.com, it's an astounding success story. Launched in the year 2000, at a time when tech stocks were considered a dirty word, a small group of savvy investors saw potential in company long before others did.
Putting in "a few hundred thousand" semi-retired manager Kevin Fitzpatrick, accountant Andrew Brice and rural property manager Lyn Brazil banked in excess of $100m from the float of WOTIF while retaining 30% of the company*, which at the time of listing was earning in excess of $15m annually and growing. Not a bad ROI in anyone's language.
Quite simply, these three investors saw value in an opportunity long before others did, and this story is not isolated. Time and again we read about Venture Capitalists and "friends and family of the founders" making fortunes by investing in companies long before they were publicly listed, but how do you get in on such opportunities as an investor and if you're a small promising business, how do you access funding?
A quick check of today’s Wotif shareprice shows the retained 30% stake is presently worth over $400m. This is in addition to the $100m+ taken at the time of the float.
Tuesday, 23 May 2006
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