With the market looking bearish, a lot of media companies put off their plans to make initial public offerings a couple of months ago. With the market looking up, the IPO faucet is being opened again. And amongst the first to come trickling out is the Dheeraj Kumar owned Creative Eye Ltd which reported a revenue of Rs 497.07 million in the year ended 31 March 2000.

The company is seeking to raise Rs 560 million through the bookbuilding route. The minimum share price it is looking at: Rs 225 per share. The issue size: 2.502 million shares. Of this 1.877 million are being kept aside for the bookbuilding route and 626,000 shares for the fixed price route. The issue will be open between 30 June 2000 and 6 July.

The company plans to set up several Internet portals and also purchase post production equipment for a studio it owns. Two Internet portals it is setting up are: entry2india.com, and matrashakti.com.

Is the issue worth a buy? The risk factors against the company are many. Creative Eye is primarily a family run concern run by the former actor and his wife and it is heavily dependent on DD as its main buyer of programming. Its dependence on the state-owned broadcaster is likely to increase what with the management looking to market films on DD, DD metro. This apart it is planning other mega mythological series and soaps for the national broadcaster.

While at first look one may therefore be inclined to say nyet to a buy, it would not be totally fair. There are worse scrips in the market which are doing reasonably well on the bourses. One could therefore pick up a minimum quantity of the share if one gets one hands on it. And sell some of the lot you get on every new high.