Dixons To Float Net Subsidiary Freeserve

Dixons has confirmed that Freeserve, its free ISP which it launched last year, is to float as a public offering on the stock market (see Newsline). Freeserve, which currently has more than 1 million users, is expected to be valued at between £500 million and £2 billion by the floatation.

John Pluthero, chief executive at Freeserve, commented: “This is a significant step in Freeserve’s strategic development and represents an important opportunity to continue to build on the quality of content and services that have made Freeserve a leading UK internet portal.”

Freeserve was voted the best consumer ISP at the first Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) awards (see Newsline) and took second place in the UK home internet market after its first six months of launch, according to BMRB research (see Newsline).

Freeserve was the first major free internet service to launch in the UK – users pay just the price of the local phone call when accessing the system (see Newsline). Since the launch of the free service by Dixons, many groups have jumped on the free ISP bandwagon, including Tesco, the Sun‘s CurrantBun.com and BT. BSkyB was the latest major group to launch a free service: skynow went online at the end of last week at http://www.skynow.co.uk.

Freeserve also announced two key management appointments this morning; Nicholas Backhouse becomes chief financial officer, and David Melville has been appointed company secretary and general counsel at Freeserve.

Dixons share price at 12:43pm today was up 42p at 1,231p.

Dixons: 01442 888 588 … http://www.freeserve.co.uk