``(Share splits) are always among our options,'' Masahiro Inoue, president of the major Internet search service provider, told in a recent interview.

Inoue did not specify the timing of the share split, but said splitting shares in the middle of a business year would incur extra costs because of the need to identify qualified shareholders. The current business year ends in March 2000.

The operator of Japan's largest website carried out a one-for-two share split this spring for shareholders registered as of March 31, doubling its outstanding shares to 13,820.

Inoue said a capital increase followed by a share split, which would increase the number of available shares on the market, would be one way of soothing recent wild moves in share prices and would help make its shares more accessible to investors.

Yahoo Japan's shareprice almost doubled in just two days in early April, hitting a record high of 60 million yen on April 9, fuelled by the better-than-expected first-quarter results of Yahoo! Inc of the US, which owns 34.2 per cent of Yahoo Japan.

At that time, Yahoo Japan shares, with a parvalue of 50,000 yen and first listed on Japan's over-the-counter market at two million yen, were designated as market-making shares, meaning they could move without a limit of stop highs or stop lows.

Since the company was taken out of the list of market-making issues in late April, it has not been unusual for the share price to rise or fall by its daily limits.