This article was displayed on the ChosunBiz MoneyMove (MM) site at 3:26 p.m. on Mar. 31, 2026.
The sale of Yooyoung Industrial, Korea's No. 2 footwear textile materials company held by private equity fund (PEF) manager VIG Partners, is proceeding smoothly. Three parties, including Coats, the United Kingdom's largest textile company, are said to be competing.
According to the investment banking (IB) industry on the 31st, Samjong KPMG, the sale manager for Yooyoung Industrial, recently held a preliminary bid for potential buyers and plans to conduct a main bid soon.
According to the industry, Coats and two domestic bidders are currently competing. Coats was founded in Scotland in the 1750s and has grown into the world's largest thread and textile company. It has conducted multiple M&A deals to vertically integrate footwear manufacturing. After acquiring Texon and Rhenoflex in 2022, it bought Obozolite, the world's No. 1 insole maker, for about 1 trillion won in Oct. last year.
Yooyoung Industrial is a textile materials company for sneaker uppers founded in 1991. It mainly produces high-performance fabrics such as jacquard and mesh. It succeeded in differentiation with technology co-developed with Nike, and secured quality and price competitiveness by establishing production bases in Vietnam and Indonesia. The market views as attractive that Yooyoung Industrial is not a simple domestic textile company but a manufacturer embedded in global sports brand supply chains.
VIG Partners acquired 100% equity in Yooyoung Industrial for about 220 billion won in 2017. Yooyoung Industrial posted 81.4 billion won in revenue and 6.5 billion won in operating profit last year, and its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) exceeded 10 billion won. This year's expected EBITDA is around 15 billion won.
The market expects Yooyoung Industrial to be sold recognizing a corporate value of more than 150 billion won. That is because the EV/EBITDA multiple was about 10 times both when VIG Partners acquired Yooyoung Industrial in 2017 and when Coats acquired Obozolite recently. Dongjin Textile, which MBK Partners acquired in 2021, also received a valuation of around 10 times EV/EBITDA.