Big Hit Entertainment, the management label of hugely popular South Korean K-pop group BTS, yesterday priced its initial public offering (IPO) at the top of its range, as hopeful buyers chased South Korea’s largest listing in three years.
Institutional investors expressed interest in more than 1,000 times the number of shares on offer, with Big Hit riding on the success of the seven-member band, which has become the first South Korean group to reach No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with the song Dynamite.
An army of retail investors, known in South Korea as Ants, is also clamoring to buy stock, while die-hard BTS fans are bidding in hopes of securing even one share in what analysts expect to be the country’ hottest listing this year.
Photo: Reuters
Big Hit priced the IPO at 135,000 won per share, it said in a regulatory filing, the top of an indicative price range of 105,000 to 135,000 won announced earlier this month.
Some 1,420 institutional investors sought shares in pre-subscription offers, looking for 1,117 times the number available, the filing said.
About 98 percent said that they would pay the top-range price or more.
“Big Hit is classified as a kind of global export firm,” Yuanta Securities Korea Co analyst Park Sung-ho said.
“Not only has it proven its ability to use YouTube, social media for smart market infiltration, it has fandom platform Weverse which gives unprecedented clarity and control over its revenue sources for a label, and might grow into a true platform player as outside artists increasingly join,” Park said.
Big Hit reported a 49.7 billion won (US$42.4 million) profit for the first half of this year as its online concert and merchandise sales on the Weverse app more than offset event cancelations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The IPO would make the seven BTS members multimillionaire stockholders, as Big Hit CEO Bang Si-hyuk last month gave them 68,385 shares each, worth nearly US$7.9 million at the issue price.
The firm would raise 962.6 billion won through the offer of 7.13 million new shares, the biggest South Korean IPO since Celltrion Healthcare Co raised 1 trillion won in 2017.
The pricing values Big Hit at about 4.8 trillion won, taking into account common shares plus redeemable preferred shares that would be converted into common shares upon the IPO.
With plenty of liquidity in the market, some analysts predict gross bids from retail investors could hit 100 trillion won.
The central bank is watching the offer closely as a massive oversubscription for shares could send ripples through short-term money markets.
Institutional and retail investors’ subscriptions are due on Monday and Tuesday next week and Big Hit is expected to list on the KOSPI on Oct. 15.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors