New Zealand’s first IT company stock index

The 4i’s of Solution 6

- New Zealand’s first IT company stock index established –
- Launch of 4i website –

Sydney, 9th August, 2000: Solution 6 Holdings Limited (ASX:SOH), a world leading supplier of IT solutions to business professionals and their clients, and innovator in ASP services, today officially launched 4i.

4i, the “Iguana Internet and Information Technology Index,” tracks the performance of New Zealand’s publicly listed Internet and Information Technology related companies.

Until now, no index has provided an industry specific benchmark for New Zealand’s rapidly expanding publicly listed IT sector.

The index draws its constituents from the 24 IT companies listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange’s Main board, Unlisted Market and New Capital Market.

Adam Rands, Solution 6’s Financial Services Producer said that 4i will deliver a reliable performance measurement of New Zealand’s technology sector.

“It will be of use to all sections of the investment community,” Mr Rands said. “We expect 4i to be a benchmark from which the New Zealand IT industry can be measured against the performance of the wider market.”

Weighted Index
Mr Rands said that 4i is a weighted index with the stock movements of the larger listed companies having a greater effect upon the value of the index than the movements of the smaller players.
“However due to the great disparity of the capitalisations of securities within 4i the weighting of larger constituents is artificially limited,” Mr Rands said.

“This ensures that the index more accurately reflects the status of New Zealand IT stocks and the local IT industry. Unlike most indexes, the weighting of any one stock within the index can not exceed 15%. This removes the heavy bias from the larger capitalised stocks and allows the movements of smaller IT companies to be reflected in the index.”

http:// 4i.co.nz
The 4i website displays the latest 4i value (updated every 5 minutes), the constituents of the index, the impact each company is having on the current day’s 4i movement and a brief dossier on the activities of each company listed in the index. Membership and calculation rules can be found at the website.

Mr Rands said that the website also offers the 4i4u Service which is provided free to any broking firm, company or individual who operates a website to allow them to display the latest 4i value for their visitors.

“Setting up the service is incredibly easy and takes just a few minutes” Mr Rands said.

4i Facts
 Started at a base of 1000 on 1st January 2000
 Operational launch on 7th August 2000 at a value of 953.20
 The index peeked at 1142.33 on 13th March 2000
 The index hit its low of 805.96 on 25th May 2000
 Telecom New Zealand is the largest company in the index
 NZIJ.co.nz is the smallest company in the index
 The index is calculated every 5 minutes between 9am and 4pm on every NZSE market trading day
 4i is a weighted index. No single security listed in the index can have greater than 15% weighting
 At the time of this announcement, the index lists 24 securities from 22 companies.
Smart. Business. Partner.
Solution 6 is a world leading e-Business solutions partner to Professional Advisors, Business and Government across the three core competencies of e-Commerce, Professional Services and Business Software. Solution 6 excels in product capability, delivering end-to-end accounting, financial, consulting, e-Business, legal, business and government solutions. Solution 6 maintains market leadership in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa in the practice management, client accounting and taxation markets. The company also has a strong presence in North America and Europe. Solution 6 is a leading Application Service Provider (ASP) innovator and proudly maintains strategic partnerships with other leading IT&T providers, such as Telstra, IBM, SAP, Cisco, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. Solution 6 was established in 1981 and was publicly listed in 1987. Solution 6 currently employs over 1600 staff across 13 countries. For more information see www.solution6.com.

Solution 6 Holdings purchased Iguana Information Services in November 1999. Leveraging the Iguana brand, Solution 6 is New Zealand’s premier provider of share market content and is responsible for the management and hosting of many of New Zealand’s larger share market website including the award winning sites Access Brokerage and StockWatch. Solution 6 manages much of New Zealand's on-line sharemarket trading activity by providing its trading platform STORMS to Access Brokerage, Bank of New Zealand and QuickTrade. Solution 6 has expanded Iguana services into the Australian market and is delivering its market information service (via web and WAP) to Telstra.com.

For more information about the 4i, please visit http://4i.co.nz

For further media information please contact:
Mark Elliot, Solution 6, Phone: 61 2 9278 0656 or 0419 238 747, email: mark.elliot@solution6.com

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