South Korea’s Netmarble Games, which is looking to raise as much as 2.66 trillion won ($2.4 billion) in an initial public offering, plans to leverage the newly generated funds to invest 5 trillion won toward strategic mergers and acquisitions in the future.
The Korean mobile game giant plans to pursue larger-scale M&As to boost its business portfolio in the future with the new capital generated by the IPO, according to Netmarble Games CEO Kwon Young-sig on Tuesday.
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Netmarble Games CEO Kwon Young-sig speaks during a press conference held in Seoul, Monday, ahead of the firm’s IPO. (Netmarble Games) |
Netmarble has offered 16.95 million shares at 121,000 won to 157,000 won apiece, allowing the firm to raise between 2.51 trillion won to 2.66 trillion won, based on the indicative range.
“If the shares are listed at the top of the price band, we would earn around 2.6 trillion won. Even after paying out our debts, we’d have 2.5 trillion won to work with, which could be leveraged to set aside up to 5 trillion in spending toward M&As,” Kwon said in a press conference in Seoul.
“Given the size of the IPO, we believe we can pursue larger-scale M&As to boost our future global expansion," Kwon said. “We will actively look into M&As with companies we can synergize with, though we are unable to share further details.”
Netmarble’s final share pricing will be determined this week, after which the shares will go on sale for two days from Tuesday to Wednesday of next week. The firm expects to make its Kospi debut on May 12.
The Korean game giant plans to actively seek M&As to raise its presence in more markets in the West. It has already made moves in this direction, acquiring US game maker Kabam’s Vancouver studio last year and puzzle game developer SGN, now named Jam City, in 2015.
Continuing its global push, the Korean mobile game giant also announced plans to launch its smash-hit mobile game “Lineage II: Revolution” in Japan by the third quarter and in China by the fourth quarter of this year.
“We’re set on recreating the game’s unprecedented success in Korea in global markets. We’re currently working with our publishing partner Tencent in China to build localized marketing strategies for the game, with aims to secure leadership in the country’s high-quality MMORPG mobile games market,” Kwon said.
Developed by Netmarble, “Lineage II: Revolution” was released in December in Korea, where it was met with explosive popularity, raking in some 206 million won in sales in the first month of its launch.
Netmarble had been preparing to launch the game in China this year via Tencent, the Korean game maker’s third-largest shareholder and publishing partner for China. It had not announced a concrete launch timetable until now.
The news eases concerns that the much-anticipated launch of “Lineage II: Revolution” in China could face delays or hurdles due to souring relations between South Korea and China over Seoul’s deployment of an American missile defense system on its territory.
Looking ahead, Netmarble expects four other blockbuster mobile games to spearhead the firm’s growth this year. They include “Penta Storm,” a Korean remake of Tencent’s hit mobile title “King of Glory,” “Blade & Soul Mobile,” “Seven Knights” and “Transformers: Forged to Fight,” a mobile game developed by Netmarble-owned Kabam.
Netmarble Games is the world’s ninth-largest game publisher in terms of in-app revenue, according to app analytics firm App Annie. Around 50.5 percent of its 2016 revenue was generated overseas.
In 2016, Netmarble posted 1.5 trillion won in revenue, up 40.4 percent on-year and 295.4 billion won in operating profit, up 31.3 percent on-year.
By Sohn Ji-young (
jys@heraldcorp.com)
