By Uta Harnischfeger

Intec Telecom Systems, a telephone billing software company, defied recent turmoil in the technology sector when its shares rose 45 per cent on their trading debut.

The sharp share price rise, which brings Intec's market capitalisation to about £440m, came after the company was forced to cut its issue price by 100p compared with initial expectations.

Intec issued 24.5m shares at 205p each, raising £16.8m. The shares ended Friday at 300p.

"When we started to plan the IPO in March, it was a happy time for technology stocks," said Kevin Adams, chief executive. "While we never felt the need to pull the IPO altogether, we had to scale it back considerably from our best valuations."

As a result, Intec had to sell more equity to raise the desired amount of funds.

r Adams said Intec would use the money to expand into Latin America and Asia. "We follow the deregulation of the telecommunications markets as it spreads around the world," he said.

So far, 60 per cent of Intec's business is in Europe, with each 20 per cent generated in Asia and Latin America.

In addition, Intec will use the funds to accelerate its product development, with plans to offer companies the opportunity of outsourcing their billing to Intec. Rather than selling its billing software to clients, Intec expects to derive much of its future business from offering billing services direct to small telecoms start-ups.

So far, Intec's software is used by 45 telecoms companies to bill other operators for interconnection charges. Intec mostly licenses its software to large telecoms companies such as France Telecom, Colt and WorldCom.

In the six months to March 31, Intec made a pre-tax profit of £1m on sales of £7.6m.

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