Vancouver: Sextant Entertainment Group of Vancouver began its first day of trading on The Canadian Dealing Network over-the-counter market March 1, with the first transaction at $2 per share.

Since then, the company has flooded the market with news releases every couple of days and investors have responded by pushing up the price per-share to $4.50 on March 14.

Among the new announcements were finalized agreements to purchase 100% of Pacific Motion Pictures – an acquisition that has been known about for months even while it was still a subsidiary of Rainmaker Entertainment Group – and Vancouver-based distribution company THA Media and Associates. The deals close by the end of July.

In the pmp transaction, which has been arranged through pmp’s parent company The Railway Film Centre, principals Tom Rowe and Matthew O’Connor receive $1 million in shares (priced at $1.25 per share). They can also earn a performance bonus of 500,000 shares based on pmp’s pretax profits.

Credited with 80 television and feature projects, pmp developed with Jodie Foster the mow The Baby, which was awarded the Peabody Award and received four Emmy nominations in 1999. Through its partnership with Hallmark Entertainment, pmp also produced the cbs miniseries Aftershock and the A&E miniseries Barnum.

The Hallmark partnership also means that Sextant will produce the four-hour, $22-million miniseries Voyage of the Unicorn, which will be delivered in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2000.

In the tha acquisition, president and sole shareholder Thomas Howe, formerly senior director for international coproductions at the cbc, will receive $200,000 cash and 150,000 shares valued at $2.50. He can earn another 200,000 shares based on pretax profits of tha.

According to Sextant, tha offers strong working relationships with some of the world’s largest entertainment companies, such as Carlton plc and Channel 4 plc.

Previous acquisitions of New City Productions, post-production/visual effects house Reel Elements and Pan Pacific Productions were announced last fall.

Other acquisitions, says the company, will flesh out its goal of having six operating divisions: film production, television production, distribution, new media (including Internet distribution), post-production/visual effects, and computer-animated production.

The company now boasts an impressive brain trust of West Coast entertainment-sector veterans. Along with Rowe, O’Connor and Howe, entertainment lawyer Michelle Gahagan, cfo Martin Johnson, former Mainframe Entertainment chief Chris Brough and his spouse, producer Colleen Nystedt, operate Sextant.

Newly appointed to the position of vice-president, visual effects is Lee Wilson, formerly employed by Rainmaker Digital Pictures and a supervising effects producer for productions such as Aftershock, The Fly and Dead Ringers.

Sextant recently raised $900,000 through a private placement at $2.50 per share. Those 356,000 shares are part of the 7.4 million shares issued and outstanding.

A plan to change the name of the company (to be more appealing to kids-oriented broadcasters and programmers) has been abandoned, says a company spokesperson.