By Yoon Ja-young
Goldman Sachs is considering acquiring shares of Ticket Monster, the country’s major social commerce company, reports said Friday.
Principle Investment Area (PIA) of Goldman Sachs is considering an acquisition of Ticket Monster, according to Money Today.
Currently, Ticket Monster is 100 percent owned by Groupon, the world’s largest social commerce company. Groupon wants to sell at least a 20 percent stake and is also considering handing over managerial control, selling over half of its stake.
Ticket Monster started as a venture company by Shin Hyun-sung, who holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, and his colleagues in 2010. It became a huge success in its first year, and Shin sold the company to Living Social in 2011 for 400 billion won.
However, amid growing concern over excessive marketing expenses in the social commerce industry, Living Social ended up selling the firm to Groupon for $260 million, or 290 billion won, in 2013.
The world’s leading deal-of-the-day company had originally said that it aimed to increase its market share in Asia through the acquisition of Ticket Monster, promising full support. However, in less than a year, it decided to put the company up for sale. Ticket Monster recorded 114.9 billion won in sales last year, but had an operating loss of 70.8 billion won. The country’s social commerce industry is facing cutthroat competition among the top three players, Coupang, Ticket Monster and WeMakePrice, and this along with huge marketing expenses is reducing their profitability.
Ticket Monster, meanwhile, said it has no information about Goldman Sachs considering an acquisition.
“Many parties will be interested in the acquisition, but please note that we haven’t even started the bidding process yet,” a spokesman for Ticket Monster said.
He said that the details of the bidding process will be determined next year.
Regarding the report, however, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs said, "Speculative reports of interest are incorrect and groundless."
US based Goldman Sachs has shown much interest in Korea’s mobile commerce industry. It invested 40 billion won in Baedal Minjok, a mobile app for food deliveries last month. The app has recorded 14 million downloads so far, and around 4 million deliveries are made monthly.