Naver plans its largest yet bond issue

Naver plans to raise as much as 700 billion won through bond sales to secure funds required to set up a new data center in South Korea and invest in foreign platform startups.

The South Korean internet giant disclosed the plan, which would be the largest in its history, in a regulatory filing with the Financial Services Commission on Tuesday. The target amount is set initially at 400 billion won, with a possibility of rising to 700 billion won, it said.

The bond issue will be Naver’s first in six years.

The firm previously raised 150 billion won from the debt market in 2015, and 100 billion won each in 2013 and 2010.

Naver plans to spend 300 billion won of the money raised for the ongoing construction of the company’s cloud data center near Sejong.

The remaining 100 billion won is to be injected into a 1 trillion won fund that Naver and Mirae Asset Daewoo jointly set up in 2018 to invest in foreign startups.

Naver has been ramping up investment in startups, particularly those in Asia.

Through the fund, Naver invested a total of $80 million in Carousell, a Singaporean marketplace platform last September. The company also injected $10 million in Malaysian e-commerce network iPrice in the same year.

In the second half of 2019, the fund also invested $10 million in Singapore-based hotel booking startup RedDoorz and $30 million in Vietnamese entertainment startup Pops Worldwide.

Earlier in 2019, Naver also acquired stocks in Indonesia-based e-commerce platform Bukalapak, which amounted to $50 million.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)