Auction Plan Sends R-Way Going, Going . . . Way Up

A Laguna Hills company whose stock was trading for $1.25 less than two weeks ago saw its shares rocket above $14 on Monday after it announced that it would launch an Internet auction site.

The nascent online shopping mall firm R-Way Corp. is a nonreporting company that trades over the counter. It has not made any of its financial information available, has no stated plan for attracting Internet traffic and has many larger, more established and better-capitalized competitors.

But that didn’t stop investors from more than doubling the price of its shares Monday, which closed at $14.03, up $8.03, in extremely heavy trading. The price valued the company at more than $101 million.

“This is as much of a surprise to me as anyone else,� said Peter J. Ferras, president and chief executive.

Ferras said he owns 70% of the 7.2 million shares outstanding, he has not sold any recently and does not plan to in the near future. He would not detail any of the company’s finances or where its funding comes from, saying only, “We are a well-funded, debt-free company.�

R-Way operates an online shopping mall, and Ferras said it is prepared to spend between $5 million and $7 million in the coming months to advertise. He acknowledged that his resources were dwarfed by the larger rivals the company named in its press releases as competitors.