April 26, 2024

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[THE INVESTOR] Cafe24, Korea’s leading e-commerce platform operator, on Jan. 26 set its IPO price at 57,000 won (US$53.58) -- the highest range of earlier expectations -- largely buoyed by the high demand from institutional investors.

The firm plans to raise 51.3 billion won in its planned KOSDAQ debut on Feb. 8. Its market cap is expected to reach 505 billion won after the listing. 

Cafe24 is the first company to go public under the so-called Tesla standards that allow a promising tech firm to be listed on the local bourse even though its financial performance doesn’t meet the existing requirements.

A total of 833 domestic and overseas institutional investors participated in the book-building process last week that was oversubscribed 672 times. More than 80 percent of the investors bid above the top range price.

“It is very rare that an IPO worth more than 50 billion won is oversubscribed almost 700 times,” said an official of Mirae Asset Daewoo, one of the lead IPO advisers along with Yuanta Securities Korea and Hanwha Investment and Securities. “Even though most of the bids were made above the top range, we decided to set a market-friendly price to protect individual investors as the first Tesla standards IPO.”

By Park Ga-young (gypark@heraldcorp.com)