Wyse Technologies Inc is to file an initial public offering next month, according to the company’s president and chief executive officer Douglas Chance. But the terminals manufacturer will not be filing on Nasdaq, but will instead look to the Taiwan exchange for its listing. Chance told Computergram that Wyse is initially looking to raise only a modest amount of money – in the region of $15 to $20m, because the company has $100m in cash and substantial real estate interests. The San Jose company is also looking at acquisition options, but Chance says Wyse won’t acquire anyone until the IPO is complete, which he estimates as being the end of the year. Wyse is looking to float in Taiwan for a number of reasons, the first being that the holding company Wyse Technology Taiwan Ltd is based there. But Chance also believes shareholders will get a better deal by listing in Taiwan, which according to him has close links with the dollar. At the present time Wyse employs 1200 staff, and one would expect that number to be rising as Wyse continues to penetrate the Windows-based terminal market. But, Chance says those figures are actually falling, because the company’s traditional character mode business is declining. The productivity side of the terminal business is increasing, and Chance foresees staff numbers will start to go up around the end of the year. Wyse has big plans for the future and the very near future will see the release of a model of WinTerm that supports Windows CE, and a terminal-on-chip will arrive next year. Wyse believes it has the edge when it comes to the Windows-based terminal, especially when the concept is applied to the intranet and task-based users. Wyse anticipates there will be between 7 million and 14 million Windows-based terminals sold in 2000, compared to 70 million personal computers. The key to their success will be enabling to control various applications from one central point – the server – without having to track different versions of applications held in a multi-user PC environment. But before Wyse can start planning its international fame, it has to start raising awareness of the company and the terminal market as a whole, which is one of the company’s main priorities for the coming months.
