Paperboy & co. goes public

Posted on November 19th, 2008 by Shunichi Arai

18th November 2008, Japanese web hosting company Paperboy (J) (JASDAQ:3633) announced that the company will be listed to JASDAQ stock market on December 19th. Paperboy runs services like Lolipop (J), Heteml (J), and Jugem (J). Kazuma Ieiri started the business in October 2001 in Fukuoka. Paperboy is providing hosting services for consumers with very low prices.

Web hosting service ‘Lolipop’ offers a web space for 263yen ($2.6) per month. Domain name reseller ‘muumuu domain‘ (J) is providing dotcom domain with 950yen ($9.5) per year. Paperboy is a subsidiary of a global registrar GMO Internet.

In March 2005, Paperboy raised 128 million yen (1.28 million USD) from GMO Internet group with a 597 million yen (6 million USD) post-money valuation. GMO Internet group is one of the biggest Japanese Internet companies. In 2006, Ieiri sold 10% of Paperboy stocks to the GMO group.

Paperboy reported a revenue of 1.7 billion yen (17 million USD) for a FY2008. Its post-tax profit was 200 million yen (2 million USD). [1]

GMO Internet is the biggest shareholder of Paperboy, and has 59.6% of its shares. Ieiri has 38.4% share of Paperboy.

Kazuma Ieiri is known as a very funny person who is doing many funny projects. He released some web gadgets, including a Flash gadget which introduces items from his shopping site by a computer generated voice. Also Paperboy is operating a cafe called HI SCORE Kitchen (J) in Shibuya.

[1] FY2008 pre-tax profit was 356 million yen (3.56 million USD).

See also:
* A prospectus (J) (PDF)
* Kazuma Ieiri’s blog (J)

Shunichi Arai

Shunichi Arai is developing a product for his new stealth startup. Arai devotes his life to software business, reading, and salsa dancing. Arai also loves to learn other cultures and languages such as Korean.

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