Stock Market Trading > Photon acquires Naked

In a stunning piece of acquisition action, Photon Group Limited (ASX: PGA )has acquired independent planning shop, Naked Communications. There is currently no announcement of the acquisition lodged with the ASX, but according to sources, the deal includes an initial upfront cash payment of £16.5 million.

Photon entered a trading halt last night, and are expected to resume this morning according to an ASX filing. 

Australian entrepreneur Nik Halik and investment wealth strategist Nik Halik.

Today, Space Adventures, Ltd., the world s leading space experiences company, announced that Nik Halik of Australia has been chosen to train as the back-up crew member alongside our orbital spaceflight candidate, famed game developer and son of former NASA astronaut, Richard Garriott, who is currently planning a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in October.

 Through his participation as a back-up crew member, Nik will experience first-hand how our clients train for spaceflight and he, himself, will be certified as a  fully-trained cosmonaut  and will be named to an official space mission crew, a distinction that less than 1,000 people have ever had,  said Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures.

 I am thrilled to be chosen as Richard s back-up. I have dreamed of flying to space ever since I was a young boy. I watched recordings of Neil Armstrong s first steps on the moon s surface and I vowed to follow,  said Nik Halik.  The space station will be my first stop, with my eyes focused on the moon.

 Not only is Nik a successful entrepreneur, but he is also an avid adventurer. Among his various expeditions, he was one the first Australians to dive down five miles and land on the bow of the Titanic and he will be the first civilian from Australia to travel to space,  added Mr. Anderson.

 Nik and I have similar exploratory backgrounds and we ll have many stories to share during our time together in Star City. I look forward to train with him because not only is it meant to prepare myself for flight, but also to prepare Nik for his future flight. I definitely will be on-hand for his eventual launch to space,  said Mr. Garriott.

The price of the program is $3,000,000 (USD) which includes the required spaceflight training costs, along with accommodations in Star City and other training locations.

About Nik Halik:

Nik Halik, born in Australia to Greek immigrant parents, is the CEO and founder of several companies including Financial Freedom Institute and Money Masters. As an international wealth strategist, he has conducted over 100 ‘Mind and Wealth Prosperity’ conferences globally and mentored investors in maximizing their wealth accumulation. His latest book that will be published and globally released in March 2008, “The Thrillionaire”, is an autobiography that also provides astute investment strategies. Mr. Halik is also an adventurer. He has lead expeditions to Antarctica, Africa and the Amazon with his adventure company, ADVENTURE ODYSSEY. Mr. Halik is a mountaineer, having summited several of the highest peaks in the world with an Everest climb planned for 2009. Nik is also an avid stormchaser in the U.S. Midwest s Tornado Alley. He is 38 years-old and resides amongst his homes in the Greek Islands, Morocco and Australia.

About Space Adventures:

Space Adventures, the company that organized the flights for the world s first private space explorers: Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, Anousheh Ansari and Charles Simonyi, is headquartered in Vienna, Va. with an office in Moscow. It offers a variety of programs such as the availability today for spaceflight missions to the International Space Station and around the moon, Zero-Gravity flights, cosmonaut training, spaceflight qualification programs and reservations on future suborbital spacecrafts.

Nik Halik’s next buzz will take him out of this world. Through a company called Space Adventures, he has been working his way through a Russian space training program. He has already flown to the edge of space, 32 kilometres above Earth (average cruising altitude for a Qantas plane is about 14 kilometres) and experienced zero gravity. Late next year, he is booked in for a suborbital flight, 100 kilometres up. His ultimate goal is to fulfil a childhood dream of visiting the International Space Station (ISS).

From the age of four he was obsessed with being an astronaut; by 12 his dream was shattered by failing maths and physics, prerequisites for a space career. But in 2001 the flame was rekindled when the American businessman Dennis Tito became the first space tourist, paying $US20 million ($28 million) to travel to the ISS. By that time Halik had become wealthy through property and stock investment; at 29 he calculated he must be a millionaire, a discovery he says was “very anticlimactic”.

By his own admission Halik is easily bored. “I need to do crazy things to fill my life, otherwise I feel my life is too complacent.”

Previously he got his kicks by running with the bulls in Pamplona and camping out with Bedouins in North Africa.

But space, as they say, is the final frontier. “I’m over Earth, I really am,” says Halik. “I’d love to be part of the first contingent to colonise the moon. Very few people in the world have ever done what I’m doing. It’s exciting and dangerous and I’m addicted to it.”

The truth is, very few have the money required to do what he’s doing. Including next year’s sub-orbital flight, Halik will have spent about $250,000 on his space adventures. He’s not sure precisely how he’ll raise the money for the final space station journey. “Hopefully the price will come down.”

Though Halik is an extreme example of the modern quest for unique challenges, he illustrates one of Mortimer’s points. “These are the pursuits of affluent nations,” he says. “If you’re struggling to find your next meal you’d be less interested in climbing to the top of a mountain. And you couldn’t afford it.”

Isn’t it about time you embraced the CFD Mastery Revolution?

Equity Contracts for Difference ((CFD)s) are growing rapidly in  popularity and, for the basic or experienced investor, are proving an attractive means of gaining exposure to the economic
performance and cash flows of individual equities without the need to invest in the physical share.

(CFD)s are geared  or leveraged instruments. This means that a deposit from as little as 10% of the value of the (CFD) is required.

Consequently, it is possible to hold a position 10 times greater than would be possible with a traditional investment. A (CFD) is a financial instrument linked to the underlying share price.

Consequently, no rights are acquired or obligations incurred relating to the underlying share and, depending on your view of a company’s share price, you can buy (go long) or sell (go short).

Nik Halik.

If real estate investing was a game, the end objective would be to own as much profitable property as possible. Owning deals that lost money would make it harder to win and would therefore be avoided.While real life property investing should follow the same game plan, many investors substitute alternative objectives that make investing a lot more complicated than it needs to be.

Promina, Oil Search, One Steel, Virgin Blue, Aristocrat, Fosters, Suncorp,
CSL, Brambles, Toll, Woodside, Oxiana and Santos.

NOTE: this is not an exhaustive list but a great starting point.

The following is some light reading for people that like to know what their
Government is up to these days.

Is the following information part of an elaborate conspiracy theory or the truth?

We saw all of the opposition towards the “Australia” card which was seen as
the government’s way of getting the upper hand on us. The card was shot down
by the people as an invasion of privacy, so what now?

The latest attempt by the Government to persist with this theory of keeping a
closer eye on us is the SmartCard. Why you might ask. The forced fed advertising
for the GREAT benefits of this card being put in front of us is that we will be able
to combine a lot of different cards (Medicare, Social Security, HealthCare etc, etc,
etc.)

On the surface this sounds great, as there will be a reduction in the cost of
maintaining so many different cards and duplication databases, which all costs
money, for the different departments/companies.

So what is wrong with that, I hear you ask. Let us now look at what is actually
proposed for this card and only drip released to us so we do not get the total
picture of the project.

Firstly they tell us that we will need to combine all of the databases into one
location, meaning that every company/department that has some data in there
can see everything about you.

Lets us now throw a photo on the card and therefore also into the database, with
the excuse of “Card Crime” prevention measure. What you now have is an identity
card that can track you, every time you use the card and everywhere you go.

Have you heard of Biometric Photographs? They are basically normal photos that
have had certain measurements recorded about the structure of your face and
recorded in the database. These values can now be searched by a computer to
find matches.  This data is already part of the new passports and is going to be
part of the SmartCard we now find out

So what, you say. Why all this fuss if you do nothing wrong you have nothing to
worry about. Did you know that this database will be made available to ASIO,
Customs and the Police department? It is interesting that when this suspicion was
first raised we were told that ASIO and the Police would need a search warrant to
access the data BUT nobody was told that there is already some “existing
overriding legislation” in place making that step redundant.

This Biometric data will give the agencies the ability to use facial matching
capabilities for tracking your every move. There have been a lot of smaller scale
tests run all over the world. Some security cameras around some cities and
Airports have been connected to this technology for some time to get some road
testing results.

Have you noticed that some airports have now started to make you walk through
a narrow passage that has a large number of cameras pointing down at you? This
is the simplest method for gathering all-round facial images for the purpose of
processing.

It is not about having something to hide it is about having FREEDOM and not
having BIG BROTHER looking over your shoulder at every turn. What is next - an
electronic chip implanted in your hand? Sorry, too late, this is also already being
tested for mass distribution.

Till next we meet, heres looking at you.

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The Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) is the primary stock exchange in Australia. The ASX began as separate state-based exchanges established as early as 1871. Today trading is all-electronic and the exchange is a public company, listed on the exchange itself.

The biggest stocks traded on the ASX, in terms of their market capitalization, include BHP Billiton, Telstra, and the National Australia Bank. The mining sector makes up a relatively high proportion of the market, and comparatively few manufacturing stocks are listed.

The major market index is the S&P/ASX 200, an index made up of the top 200 shares in the ASX. This supplanted the previously significant All Ordinaries index, which still runs parallel to the S&P ASX 200. Both are commonly quoted together. An index of only the bigger stocks is the S&P/ASX 50.

The ASX is a public company, and its own shares are traded on the ASX. However, the corporation’s charter restricts maximum individual holdings to a small fraction of the company.

While the ASX regulates other listed companies listed on the ASX, it cannot regulate itself, and is regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

LINK: http://www.asx.com.au/

HFA Investments made an impressive debut on the Australian Stock Exchange yesterday with its stock leaping from $1.10 to close at $1.39. “It has been a pretty healthy day,” HFA founder and chief executive Spencer Young said. He was happy with the institutional investors who had supported the offering. HFA is a fund of hedge funds group with $2.1 billion under management. Fund of hedge funds groups invest in different hedge funds to produce a low-risk blended return. HFA’s ready acceptance by the public market reflects the growing popularity of hedge funds in Australia.

Shares in Pengana Hedge Fund Managers and Everest Babcock & Brown have recently recovered from long periods of underperformance and the global hedge fund business is doing better after a difficult 2005. The Credit Suisse/Tremont hedge fund index was up 5.46 per cent in the first three months of the year.

Mr Young thinks that his group has some distinct advantages over its peers. “We have a very strong distribution capability,” he said. The group had 15,000 investors, whom it reached through financial planners. “We have a unique business. It is the equivalent of a mutual fund in the fund of hedge funds business.” HFA’s sales force travels the country educating financial planners on the attractions of hedge funds. The rationale for the IPO was partially to fund expansion.

But it was also to crystallise the position of HFA’s senior executives, who are also among the group’s largest investors. Mr Young made more than $66 million from the float, part of which he will reinvest in a 12.6 per cent stake in HFA. The names of his colleagues stud the list of HFA’s top 20 investors. HFA was owned by MFS before the sale, and MFS remains the largest shareholder with just under 38 per cent, followed by Mr Young.

Discount accommodation website Wotif.com is set to float on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) through a $161 million initial public offering (IPO). Wotif said it had lodged a prospectus with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for the IPO, under which it will offer about 85.98 million shares. That represents about 42 per cent of Wotif’s issued capital. Existing shareholders will hang on to the other 58 per cent of the company, which was set up six years ago, with chief executive Graeme Wood retaining a 25.1 per cent share. “The offer price is to be set through an institutional bookbuild within a pricing range of $1.75 to $2.00 per share,” Wotif said in a statement.

“Based on the midpoint of this range, the offer size is approximately $161 million and Wotif.com’s market capitalisation will be approximately $381 million.” Mr Wood said Brisbane-based Wotif had a low-cost, highly-focused business model that had generated strong revenue and earnings growth. “We are the Australasian market leader in the online accommodation industry, processing approximately 36 per cent of all online accommodation sales in Australia and 18 per cent in New Zealand,” he said.

The company said it expected to deliver a net profit of $15.7 million in fiscal 2006, and $19.1 million the following financial year. It has forecast revenue to increase by 41 per cent in 2005/06 to $45.3 million, and by 23 per cent to $55.8 million in 2006/07 Last financial year, the company reported revenue of $32.1 million. Wotif.com also expects to declare a fully franked final dividend of one cent a share this financial year and 8.4 cents a share in fiscal 2007 Macquarie Equity Capital Markets Ltd and ABN Amro Morgans Corporate Ltd are joint lead managers for the offer

LINK http://www.wotif.com

Independent interactive TV provider IceTV hopes to raise $4 million to list on the Australian Stock Exchange, planning to expand its services and subscriber base.

IceTV says it has priced shares at 50 cents in its initial public offering (IPO), with a minimum purchase of 4,000 shares. IceTV is similar to TiVo in the US, and allows subscribers to watch and record television without having to programme a video recorder.

The company plans to target the free-to-air market in Australia which accounts for 75 per cent of all households. It has partnered with a number of manufacturers to integrate the IceTV service into media centres and digital video recorders. Chief executive Duncan Ross said IceTV changes the way people watch television. “The family dynamic in my home has been transformed since we moved from watching TV on the network’s timetable to watching our favourite shows when it suits us,” Mr Ross said. He said listing on the ASX would be an important step in the development of the company.

“Attracting investors through the share offer will enable us to push forward with developing a range of exciting new services that will enable our subscribers to take even greater control of their TV viewing,” Mr Ross said.

 IceTV IceTV: home of iceguide, an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) for Australian free-to-air TV on your Personal Video Recorder (PVR).
www.icetv.com.au/