Netmarble’s US mobile game subsidiary Jam City to go public

Jam City, Netmarble’s mobile game subsidiary in the US, will go public in a deal with a blank-check company in the second half of this year, company officials said Friday.

The company has reached a merger agreement with a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company DPCM Capital, which will result in Jam City being listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

The combined company will have a valuation of $1.2 billion, according to Jam City.

Jam City will use the cash proceeds to acquire a Montreal-based mobile game publisher Ludia, which makes games based on the Jurassic World movies.

Netmarble acquired a 60 percent stake in Jam City at 150 billion won ($133.1 million) in 2015. Since then, Netmarble carried out an aggressive expansion through Jam City, buying rights to Disney’s popular game Emoji Blitz in 2018 and rights to Frozen intellectual properties in 2019.

Last year, Netmarble logged 1.79 trillion won in sales from the overseas market, which is 72 percent of its total sales.

By Kim Byung-wook (kbw@heraldcorp.com)