This year has been a phenomenal year for Korean startups and companies as record numbers are coming with a public issue. Krafton and Wanted Lab lock their IPO price as Kakao Bank’s public issue receive ‘sell’ , Kakao Bank’s IPO receives a lukewarm response. Also, travel & leisure startup Yanolja, which is soon to release its public issue and recently received record funding from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, is on a buying spree.
Krafton IPO priced at top end of $432 apiece on avid foreign demand
Source: Pulse News
Krafton Inc.’s initial public offering (IPO) has been priced at 498,000 won ($432), the highest end of its pricy desired band, on eager pursuit by foreign institutions to raise 4.3 trillion won and tower over other publicly trading game stocks on the KOSPI as well as making the second biggest IPO from Korea.
Krafton disclosed Thursday that it has priced its IPO of 5,624,000 shares at 498,000 won a piece after a lengthy book building from July 14 to 27. It would be the second-largest IPO after Samsung Life Insurance at 4.8 trillion won in 2010.
The market cap based on the offering price is 24.3 trillion won, the largest as game publisher and 32 percent higher than NCSoft. Public subscription will take place August 2-3.
Wanted Lab’s public offering price confirmed at 35,000 won; Demand forecasting competition ratio 1504 to 1
Source: Platum
Wanted Lab, the operator of the AI-based recruitment platform ‘Wanted’, confirmed and announced the IPO price at 35,000 won, which is the upper end of the public offering band, in the demand forecast conducted for institutional investors on July 26th and 27th.
A total of 1,597 institutional investors participated in this demand forecast, recording a competition of 1,504 to 1. About 99% of participating institutions wrote their IPO price above the upper end of the desired range, and in order to determine the market-friendly IPO price, the existing IPO price was set at the top of the desired band (28,000~35,000 won), resulting in a total public offering amount of KRW 25.6 billion. has been confirmed as
Wanted Lab, launched in 2015, quickly entered the job market by introducing the recruitment platform ‘wanted’ as a business model of ‘recruitment by acquaintances’. Currently, it is providing AI matching recruitment service based on more than 2.2 million real-time matching result data, and has entered five Asian countries including Korea.
Kakao Bank’s IPO subscription draws relatively lukewarm response from retail investors
Source: Korea Herald
South Korean internet-only bank Kakao Bank Corp. is set to draw relatively low subscription from retail investors for its initial public offering (IPO), with deposits for the stock offering at a smaller-than-expected 22 trillion won ($19.1 billion) as of 11 a.m., its IPO managers said Tuesday.
On the last day of the two-day subscription, retail investors may pour additional deposits to subscribe for one of the largest IPO deals. Kakao Bank’s IPO subscription for individual investors closes at 4 p.m.
Last week, Kakao Bank set its public offering price at 39,000 won, hoping to raise 2.55 trillion won via its listing at the main bourse on Aug. 6. The total figure is smaller compared with those of other big-name companies that went public this year, such as SK IE Technology Co. and SK Bioscience Co., which raised 43.8 trillion won and 33.9 trillion won in subscription deposits, respectively.
Yanolja Cloud to Launch Smart Hotels with Turkey’s CMH https://t.co/whBo2OtOIq #KoreanConglomerate #OpenInnovation #KoreaStartup #KoreaTechToday
— KoreaTechToday (@Koreatechtoday) July 29, 2021
Yanolja emerging as candidate to buy Interpark
Source: The Bell
Market insiders are paying attention to whether South Korea’s travel and hospitality startup Yanolja will join a race for Interpark, the nation’s pioneering booking and shopping platform.
NH Investment & Securities, which manages the sale of Interpark, has distributed teaser letters to potential buyers, industry sources said Tuesday. The brokerage firm plans to send out information memorandum at the end of July.
Market insiders start to mention Yanolja as one of the strong candidates to take over Interpark. Yanolja is said to be positively reviewing the acquisition after receiving a teaser from NH Investment & Securities. The accommodation booking platform has secured sufficient money after it received a 2 trillion-won ($1.73 billion) investment from Softbank’s Vision Fund. The acquisition of Interpark may create synergy as it can reduce the purchase cycle, Yanolja’s biggest concern.
