Anna Jiwon Park has been covering the politics at The Korea Times since the summer of 2024, when she joined the press pool for the Office of the President in Korea. Prior to that, she spent about five years reporting extensively on financial markets, regulatory authorities and the financial industry. She joined The Korea Times in 2019 after spending eight years as a broadcast journalist at Arirang TV, Korea’s leading global broadcaster, covering politics, defense and culture.
Market Kurly targets IPO in U.S. stock market based on strong sales growth
An image from a Market Kurly ad / Courtesy of Market Kurly
By Anna J. Park
By Anna J. Park
Aiming to make its initial public offering (IPO) debut at a U.S. stock market later this year, Market Kurly is set to kick off meetings with underwriters in early April to come up with effective public offering strategies. The premium grocery delivery business designated three global investment banks ― Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan ― in mid-March to manage its IPO process.
According to the investment banking industry, the grocery-focused e-commerce unicorn could be valued at a minimum 4 trillion won or 5 trillion won ($3.5 billion to 4.5 billion), considering the company's impressive revenue growth rate in recent years.
Market Kurly's annual revenue in 2020 stood at 952.3 billion won, almost double the 2019 revenue of 428.9 billion won. In 2019, the e-commerce company saw a year-on-year growth of 173 percent. The growth rate far exceeds the average growth rate of local e-commerce businesses.
Despite the fact that the firm has yet to generate a net profit, its annual losses have narrowed compared to its revenue. A Market Kurly official explained that the ratio of its annual net loss compared to annual revenue has decreased to the 10 percent range in 2020, from around 20 percent in 2019.
Considering that PSR (price-to-sales ratio) is usually used in a corporate valuation of an e-commerce business, Market Kurly's fast-growing annual revenue is positively viewed in the investment banking industry. Market Kurly recently opened a large logistics center in Gimpo, aiming to expand the scope of early-morning deliveries beyond the capital area.
“While grocery takes up the largest portion of retail businesses, it lags far behind in the rate of transitioning into online shopping,” Market Kurly's Founder and CEO Sophie Kim said during a recent press conference. “Online shopping accounts for about 50 percent to 80 percent of other retail markets, but it only takes less than 20 percent in the grocery sector. This means there is much more room to grow for online grocery businesses.”
Kim's proficiency in the global investment banking industry is also raising investors' expectations about the firm's maximum valuation in U.S. stock markets. After graduating from Wellesley College in the U.S., Kim worked as a consultant and analyst at McKinsey, Bain & Company and Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong and Seoul.