Fervor for upcoming initial public offerings of Kakao names has grown wild after the blockbuster IPO of Kakao Games Corp.

Kakao Games, which fanned stock craze in Korea after drawing 58 trillion won ($49 billion) retail orders, is to be listed on the secondary Kosdaq market on Thursday. Some market analysts are optimistic that the stock may shot up as high as 62,400 won, nearly triple of its IPO price, on the debut day.

The multi-platform gaming company under Kakao Corp., the operator of Korea’s most popular chat platform KakaoTalk, delivered an operating profit of 35 billion won on sales of 391 billion won last year. Its operating profit in the first six months reached 28.7 billion won, with sales of 203 billion won. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the recent three years amounted to 57 percent.

Kakao Games is the first Kakao family to be listed, and its mega hit now raises high expectations for the IPO pipeline from Kakao family.

Web comics, fiction and video arm Kakao Page is next in the line. It has named NH Investment & Securities and KB Securities as its underwriters and is readying to file for a preliminary review for its IPO planned later this year.

Kakao Page recently saw a rapid growth in users and revenue amid the ascent of non-contact services during the pandemic crisis. It is expected to receive billions of dollars valuation thanks to its successful business at home and abroad, with the comic app Piccoma serviced in Japan topping the non-game mobile app rankings by revenue in July.

Internet-only Kakao Bank is prepping IPO after it posted a net profit of 45.3 billion won in the first six months, almost quadruple of the full-year net profit in 2019.

Parent Kakao shares fell 1.54 percent to close Wednesday at 384,000 won in Seoul.

By Pulse

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]