AsiaInfo Holdings entered an agreement Friday to develop China Unicom's national push-mail mobile email system, which allows users to send and receive emails and view multimedia attachments via a mobile device.
Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
Shares of AsiaInfo, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., were recently trading above its 52-week high at $8.68, up 12%, or 93 cents on heavy volume.
The deal follows several others the company has signed within the last three months. AsiaInfo has been inking deals with China's leading telecommunications companies, including China Telecom and China Mobile.
Analyst Chang Hua Qiu, of Forun Technologies, said the company has benefitted from the potential for third-generation, or 3G, licenses in China, which would allow mobile providers to operate non-voice services like email, music downloads and entertainment on their phones.
"The firm basically is coming back," said Chang, who has an outperform rating on the stock and expects the firm to break even for its 2006 fourth quarter. The company reports earnings later this month.
"Telecom software is growing at an accelerated pace, and their security software business has turned around. As of this year, it no longer lost money," Chang added. Chang says 2007 should be a growth year for the stock, which fell earlier in 2006 and has since rebounded.
Forun Technologies and Chang both own shares of AsiaInfo.
Last month was a busy month for the company, which, while based in the U.S., deals primarily with Chinese telecom companies and has offices in seven Chinese cities including Shanghai.
In late December, AsiaInfo signed a contract with four China Telecom units to upgrade the company's business support systems, a month after it signed a similar deal with China Unicom.
A few weeks earlier, the company announced it entered an agreement to build a new billing system for China Mobile, which would allow the company to track what features customers use on their phones.
Before that deal, AsiaInfo agreed to expand the customer service system for Beijing Mobile Communication Corp.
The terms of the deals weren't disclosed and the company couldn't be reached for comment this morning.
A. Christian Jean, Dow Jones Newswires, 201-938-2007
(Adam Kuczynski contributed to this report.)
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment