In that short time, the plan called for the team at Walker Wayland to undertake due diligence for the purchase of the local software development business and provide assistance to the new company, 8common limited, as it prepared for an initial public offering and listing on the Australian Stock Exchange.
“They started with a blank sheet of paper in February and listed 8common in the last week of August,” explained Walker Wayland NSW audit partner Grant Allsopp.
According to Zoran Grujic, 8common Director and CFO, Walker Wayland provided valuable strategic advice to the new company.
“Grant and his team at Walker Wayland were very thorough in their guidance,” he said. “We were delighted and surprised by their level of dedication and the long hours they put into this project to ensure their advice was right.
“They were steadfast in their execution and alignment to the mandate. It was very clear in my mind that we had the right advisors.” Allsopp said his firm was in a strong position to complete the project through its affiliations.”We called on Advantage Advisors, another member of the Walker Wayland Australasia network, and also our colleagues in the international BKR accounting association to work with us on a number of aspects of this undertaking,” he said.
“A high level of knowledge of international transactions and tax implications was vital to the success of our work. We could not have done it alone.” 8common’s major assets are software products Expense8 and Realtors8.
Expense8 is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product designed to assist companies to process corporate expense claims such as credit card expenses, e-invoices and employee reimbursement expenses through a web and mobile interface. Realtors8 provides real estate agents and brokers with a web-based content management system that helps users to create unique websites to list property portfolios. The new company
first purchased the developer of Expense8. It then bought 8Capita Solutions, a subsidiary of 8Capita, that owned the real estate product.
The company’s initial public offering through a prospectus issued 14 million new shares at an offer price of A$0.25 to raise A$3.5 million, valuing the company at $13.5 million. The offer was oversubscribed.
Grant Allsopp said: “Our audit and assurance team worked overtime to help the 8common team with this exciting new venture. In the end, I think it was a clear demonstration of the power of the Walker Wayland team both in Sydney and throughout the network to make the extraordinary seem quite smooth.” According to 8common’s CEO Nic Lim, “There are clear opportunities for growth from both our existing markets and the Asia Pacific.
“We are delighted to have successfully completed the IPO and particularly pleased with the strong level of investor interest out of Australia and Asia that resulted in the offering being well oversubscribed. “We have a clearly defined execution roadmap for both continued expansion within our core markets in Australia and North America and growth markets in Asia where we can leverage existing clients in Hong Kong and Japan,” Lim added.
Besides Singapore and Australia, 8common has employees in Vancouver, Canada, and a dedicated outsourced team in the Philippines.