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PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG Studio) |
Krafton has priced its initial public offering at 498,000 won ($434.5) a share, at the top end of its indicative price range of 400,000-498,000 won, the South Korean game maker said in a regulatory filing Thursday.
The game developer behind shooting game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds wrapped up its book-building process Tuesday. While institutional investors placed their bids to obtain new shares for the IPO, a total of 621 domestic and overseas institutions participated. Competition among them marked 243 to 1.
“Through the book building, Krafton drew pretty positive evaluation from institutional investors both in and out the country,” said Kim Chang-han, chief executive officer of Krafton. “We’ll continuously suggest our endless extensibility and future growth probability based on games.”
The gaming giant is anticipated to raise up to 4.31 trillion won, which is likely to be the second largest in value in the IPO market history here. The nation’s largest IPO deal is Samsung Life Insurance’s 4.89 trillion won so far.
Ahead of its market debut on the nation’s main bourse Kospi on Aug. 10, a two-day public subscription is scheduled to be held Aug. 2-3, while Mirae Asset Securities is the lead underwriter. Retail investors are allowed to place multiple subscriptions for the IPO deal.
Krafton earlier faced criticism over what financial authorities and market watchers had called an “overrated” valuation. But since it has reduced the target price band and number of new shares to issue, market insiders forecast Krafton’s valuation after listing to reach around 24.4 trillion won.
By Jie Ye-eun (
yeeun@heraldcorp.com)
