The domestic pizza franchise "Gopizza," which has focused on scaling its footprint, is now being tested on whether it can prove profitability. It achieved quantitative growth with 1,200 stores worldwide, but critics say its financial fundamentals fall short.
Costs incurred during overseas expansion led to accumulated deficits in the tens of billions of won, and the asset value of major overseas subsidiaries also fell sharply. Whether it can generate real profit is expected to be the watershed that determines its future corporate value.
Gopizza plans to improve its financial health by restructuring around profitability, expanding its B2B2C (consumer transactions linked and partnered with other companies) business, and enhancing expense efficiency.
According to the startup industry on the 10th, Gopizza, which is eyeing an initial public offering (IPO), recognized a total of 12.1 billion won in impairment losses for overseas subsidiaries as of the end of 2024—7.8 billion won for Singapore, 3.1 billion won for India, and 1.1 billion won for Indonesia.
In accounting, "impairment loss" means writing down as an expense when the future value of an invested asset has fallen significantly and is deemed unrecoverable.
In particular, the Singapore subsidiary saw 93% of its asset value wiped out. This effectively means the local business is unlikely to recover even its principal investment. Experts said the aggressive global expansion has boomeranged into worsening profitability.
The company described this as part of a process to wind down its past company-owned, expansion-centric approach and restructure around profitability. Gopizza is currently switching struggling overseas subsidiaries to manufacturing–franchise (MF) and joint venture (JV) models to reduce fixed costs and reorganize toward a more profitable business structure.
◇ The "system sales" illusion… the real report card is "20 billion won operating loss"
Gopizza was founded in 2017 by CEO Lim Jae-won with the concept that a person could eat pizza cheaply alone. After gaining a foothold in the domestic market, it expanded overseas starting with India in 2019, followed by Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Thailand. Last year, it opened its first store in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The number of stores at home and abroad has reached 1,200.
Gopizza said it achieved 50 billion won in "system sales," the total sales of headquarters and franchisees, emphasizing its growth potential.
However, accounting experts say this is not an appropriate indicator of a corporation's fundamentals. Actual sales recorded in the audit report (as of 2024) that flow into the company's coffers amount to only 19.9 billion won. The company said that including sales from overseas subsidiaries, the figure exceeds 30 billion won on a consolidation basis.
The bigger problem is profitability. Operating losses accumulated over the four years from 2021 to 2024 alone amount to about 20 billion won. Net loss, which was around 7 billion won in 2021, actually ballooned to 11.2 billion won in 2024.
Unappropriated retained losses (accumulated deficit) stood at 36.6 billion won, as money lost far outstripped money earned so far.
◇ 60 billion won raised… task is to prove profitability for VC exits
Gopizza said, "In 2025, the domestic subsidiary succeeded in turning a profit on an EBITDA (operating profit before depreciation and amortization) basis, and the India subsidiary also turned profitable in December."
It added, "The fact that the two most important subsidiaries in terms of sales scale and business weight turned profitable at the same time can be evaluated as a key indicator that gauges improvement in the group's overall profit structure beyond simple regional results."
Still, this indicator should be assessed soberly. Because capital expenditure on high-priced automated ovens and other equipment is essential, some note that EBITDA, which excludes depreciation and interest expense, has limits in assessing true cash generation capacity.
That said, some in the industry say that, in addition to the two core subsidiaries turning profitable, if other overseas subsidiaries reduce fixed costs by converting to MF and JV structures, this could become a meaningful inflection point for improving the group's overall profit and loss.
Gopizza has raised about 60 billion won from GS Ventures, CJ Investment, and Thailand's CP Group, among others. That is because Gopizza is classified not as a simple pizza shop but as a Foodtech corporation.
In the venture investment industry, exits (recovery of investment) are typically expected within five to seven years after investment. That is why there are calls that this year requires proof of tangible performance for the recovery of investment in Gopizza.
An industry official said, "Now the key issue is not expansion but when the invested capital can generate profit," adding, "Given the scale of accumulated losses, whether profitability is verified will be a key variable determining corporate value in future IPO or mergers and acquisitions (M&A) phases."
On this, Gopizza CEO Lim Jae-won said, "As of the end of last year, sales from company-owned stores increased to 50%, and the business has been reorganized around profitability," adding, "If you add the sales of domestic and overseas subsidiaries for 2024 and last year, the total exceeds 30 billion won."
Lim added, "Franchise sales are at around 20%, and the remaining 30% of sales comes from large-company partnerships and solution sales."