unit of Tyco International, said yesterday it would sell 40 million shares for $20-$25 per share in its initial public offering.

The Bermuda-based company, which was recently formed as a unit of the manufacturing conglomerate Tyco, has designed, engineered, manufactured and installed more than 350,000 kilometers of undersea cable, and will net about $868.5 million based on those terms.

As a result of the impending IPO, TyCom has recently been advertising locally in The Royal Gazette for sales professionals to be based in its Zurich Centre offices. "Key opportunities exist in our Pembroke office for dynamic sales professionals to help market the next generation of global telecommunications,'' one of the employment ads read. The terms of the IPO were revealed for the first time in an amended prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday.

After the IPO, 230 million shares of common stock will be outstanding in TyCom, giving it an initial market capitalisation of about $5.17 billion based on an initial price of $22.50 per share, the midpoint of the set range.

Tyco will indirectly own about 80 percent of all the outstanding shares after the IPO, according to the prospectus.

TyCom said it would use the proceeds from the offering to deploy the first phase of its worldwide undersea fibre optic cable system TyCom Global Network and to pay a dividend to TGN Holdings Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tyco.

That first phase will be designed to offer bandwidth capacity that can be upgraded to a minimum of 2.56 terabits per second, span 70,000 kilometres and connect 27 major telecommunications hubs, including New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

The transatlantic portion of the first phase is scheduled to be operational by the second half of 2001 and the transpacific and European parts by the end of 2002.

As the network is built over the next 10 years, it will likely span more than 250,000 kilometers linking networks on six continents, according to the prospectus.

TyCom said it does not plan to pay dividends on its common shares and instead will retain any earnings to run its business and fund future growth.

The company had net revenue of about $1.27 billion and net income of $135.2 million during the six-month period ended March 31, the filing showed.

The underwriters, Goldman, Sachs & Co., Salomon Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch & Co., have been given the option to buy an extra six million shares to cover over-allotments in case of heavy demand.

TyCom has applied to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "TCM'' (TCM.N) once it goes public.