LG Ad Solutions operator Alphonso eyes US listing

Alphonso co-founder Ashish Chordia speaks at a press conference held at Conrad Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of Alphonso

The leadership team of Alphonso, which operates LG Electronics’ connected TV (CTV) ad solution brand, visited Seoul Tuesday and shared the company’s plans for future growth, including its initial public offering (IPO).

“Alphonso plays a central role in realizing LG Electronics’ vision of evolving smart TVs into digital platforms where content, advertising, commerce and artificial intelligence (AI) are seamlessly integrated,” Alphonso co-founder Ashish Chordia said during a press conference in Yeouido, Seoul.

“We are already making a significant contribution to LG’s revenue and profit, and this contribution will expand further in the coming years … Alphonso will work closely with LG as a shareholder to drive technology investment, platform innovation and global expansion.”

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Alphonso operates LG Ad Solutions, which provides advertising services worldwide based on LG Electronics’ webOS platform. At the end of last year, webOS was installed in more than 220 million TVs around the world, growing as one of LG Electronics' major revenue sources.

Alphonso came under LG Electronics’ control in 2020, after the Korean electronics giant acquired a 50.1 percent stake in the company. As a key partner of LG Electronics, Alphonso has since expanded its business across North America, Europe and Latin America, accelerating TV-based advertising monetization with an average revenue growth of over 40 percent from 2022 to 2024.

Chordia said one of the reasons LG invested in Alphonso was its proprietary automatic content recognition (ACR) technology, which collects and analyzes viewers’ actual content consumption patterns in real time. This enables advertisers to manage the entire campaign process within a single integrated system.

Buoyed by their partnership, LG logged over 1 trillion won ($720 million) in sales from its webOS business last year, and Chordia assumes the global CTV market is now $1 trillion.

“The CTV market is growing very fast, but it’s not just growing very fast at the expense of other advertising business,” Chordia said. “It’s growing very fast because of the changes in nonadvertising businesses, because hardware, subscription revenues are turning into ad revenues.”

Based on the rosy growth outlook on the CTV advertising market, Alphonso has kicked off its listing process. Alphonso’s key shareholders have formally requested the company to file a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

Though the company did not share any details on its listing process, including timelines, the volume of shares it will offer to the market or other specifics, it stressed that shareholders will benefit from the IPO given the robust growth trajectory of its businesses.

Alphonso co-founder Ashish Chordia, left, shakes hands with LG Ad Solutions Chief Marketing Officer Tony Marlow during a press conference at Conrad Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of Alphonso

The IPO was one of the contentious points between LG Electronics and Alphonso.

At the time of LG Electronics’ investment, the two sides agreed that Alphonso co-founders and its major shareholders could demand LG Electronics list the company by 2023, if the business scaled up.

But the IPO did not take place then, and the two sides became mired in conflicts over the company’s board membership, as LG ousted Chordia and other Alphonso executives from the board.

In 2023, Chordia and his colleagues filed lawsuits against LG Electronics, accusing the company of breaching their contract and attempting a hostile takeover, and won both cases, helping Chordia to regain his seat on the board.

In March, a Delaware court ruled that LG’s exclusion of the founders from the board was “malicious” and ordered the restoration of their IPO rights and minority shareholder protections.

Despite their legal battles, LG Electronics holds a 65.7 percent stake through its U.S. body, and the two sides are managing their relations due to the high growth potential of the CTV advertising market.

“The legal dispute is not fully resolved but I think a lot of progress has been made,” Chordia said. “There continues to be some dispute with minority shareholder and LG, but I think the majority of that dispute is behind us, and all of us are focused on this massive growth opportunity in front of us.”