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.
Major companies to make long-awaited IPO debuts
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By Anna J. Park
APR expected to become first major IPO of year
With the Lunar New Year holidays ending, many companies have begun to accelerate their preparations for their respective initial public offering (IPO) goals, aiming to accomplish their stock market debuts within the first half of this year. As companies that have previously withdrawn their original IPOs — due to unfavorable market conditions at the time — are now attempting to make another push to be listed, the domestic IPO market is forecast to see an increase throughout this year, according to investment banking industry officials, Monday.
The number of newly listed companies throughout this year is expected to reach 85, a 3.7 percent increase from last year's 82. The number of companies that have been on standby, waiting to find the optimal moment to launch their IPOs, has also increased from last year's 52 to 57 this year.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, K Weather, a big data climate platform company, COXEM, a scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) manufacturer, and E8IGHT, a digital simulation software company, will conduct public subscriptions from retail investors for their upcoming Kosdaq listing.
The three companies have all succeeded in attracting institutional investors during their book building process, which was conducted earlier this month, raising market expectations for a buoyed atmosphere toward new listings. K Weather and COXEM, in particular, have each recorded a competition rate of 1,353:1 and 1,267.6:1 for their offering of stocks during the book building process for institutional investors.
A promotional image for Medicube beauty devices / Courtesy of APR
APR, a beauty tech company that also encompasses fashion businesses, is also slated to conduct a public subscription for two days on Wednesday and Thursday, for its upcoming IPO at the main benchmark KOSPI market.
The company is expected to be the first major IPO candidate of this year, with corporate valuation based on initial public offering stock price expected to exceed at least 1.1 trillion won to 1.5 trillion won ($850 million to 1.2 billion). Besides holding the top position in the beauty device market in Korea, with a market share of 32 percent, as of the first half of 2023, the company's earnings globally are also rising fast, accounting for 37.5 percent in 2023.
Market analysts favorably view the company's future growth prospects, based on a substantial increase in the average selling price (ASP), the optimization of production lines as well as the firm's expected expansion in the North American market.
"For the fiscal year of 2024, the firm's earnings are expected to reach 800 billion won, which is a year-on-year 53.8 percent, with an operating profit of 160 billion won," Park Se-ra, an analyst at Daishin Securities, pointed out.
Lee Seung-gun, founder and CEO of Viva Republica, the operator of Toss, speaks during a press conference in Seoul in 2019. Yonhap
Following the suit of the APR, there will be a series of other mega-sized IPO candidates, including HD Hyundai Marine Solution, Kbank, Seoul Guarantee Insurance (SGI) and Toss, which are highly likely to try again to go public this year.
HD Hyundai Marine Solution, a marine services company that is part of HD Hyundai Group, plans to file a prospectus by the end of the first half of this year to kickstart its public offering process. Kbank and SGI, both ended up withdrawing their listing moves last year, but each has initiated to reappoint their main underwriters soon, to complete their respective IPO procedures this year.
Viva Republica, the operator of Toss, has also recently selected its group of main and joint underwriters, resuming its previously suspended IPO attempt in 2022 amid soaring global interest rates.
LG CNS, a system integration and solution provider, is also considering pushing ahead with its long-awaited listing this year.