The Pinkfong Company, the children's content corporations known for "Baby Shark," set its offering price at 38,000 won, the top end of the desired range. Based on the offering price, the total offering size is 76 billion won, and the market capitalization at listing is 545.3 billion won.
The Pinkfong Company said on the 5th that it set the offering price at 38,000 won, the top of the desired range (32,000–38,000 won), based on the results of the bookbuilding conducted for five business days from on the 28th of last month.
A total of 2,300 domestic and foreign institutions participated in the bookbuilding. The simple competition rate was tallied at 615.89 to 1. Of the participating institutions, 2,298 placed orders at or above the top end of the offering price range (including orders without price indications), with only two institutions below that.
Thirty percent of institutional order volume was locked up with a commitment not to sell the IPO shares for at least 15 days. That is somewhat lower compared with IPO corporations that recently conducted bookbuilding. Since the lockup rules were strengthened in Jul., the average commitment ratio for corporations that conducted bookbuilding has been about 47%.
Founded in 2010, The Pinkfong Company is a company that develops various content businesses—such as animation, music, performances, and games—based on character intellectual property (IP) including the popular character Baby Shark (Shark Family), as well as Pinkfong and Bebefinn.
Its core revenue source is the company's YouTube channels, which have 280 million subscribers. It operates separate YouTube channels for each character to provide content. In 2015, the "Baby Shark" content became a global hit and drew much attention.
The company showed growth, surpassing 20 billion won in operating profit in 2020, during the COVID-19 period. Results then slowed somewhat. Operating profit in 2022 and 2023 fell below 4 billion won, and net profit turned to a loss.
However, last year it achieved a rebound in results, recording 97.4 billion won in revenue on a consolidation basis and 18.8 billion won in operating profit. Net profit also turned to a surplus at 5 billion won. In the first half of this year, it continued the recovery with 45.2 billion won in revenue and 9 billion won in operating profit.
The company plans to list on the KOSDAQ market on the 14th after retail subscriptions on the 6th–7th. Mirae Asset Securities and Samsung Securities are joint lead managers. The company plans to invest the funds secured through the listing in ▲ new IP development and launches ▲ advancement of IP production processes ▲ premium animation production ▲ expansion of its location-based entertainment (LBE) business.