Overseas institutional investors with deep pockets said they are watching the massive personal data leak at Coupang but stepped back, saying the long-term impact will be limited. With Coupang ranked No. 1 in Korea's e-commerce market and seen as having no clear rival, actual consumers also appear to have little choice but to keep using Coupang.
Baillie Gifford, a major shareholder of Coupang Inc listed on the New York Stock Exchange, said on the 5th in an email reply to ChosunBiz asking about the Coupang data leak in Korea and the market fallout, "We invest with a long-term perspective, so we do not respond to temporary share-price volatility and issues."
Baillie Gifford explained, "We are very long-term investors, holding a company for at least five to 10 years, and even longer." Known as an early investor in Tesla and Meta, Baillie Gifford is reportedly Tesla's second-largest shareholder and has invested for more than 11 years, generating more than 8,000% in returns. Assets under management currently total 270 billion pounds (about 530.6013 trillion won).
It joined Coupang as an early investor at the time of the 2021 listing and has consistently appeared among the top shareholders. As of the end of the third quarter this year, 80.5% or more of Coupang's Class A common stock was held by institutional investors, including Baillie Gifford and VC/PE firms. Individuals accounted for 10.1%, with the remainder held by others including employees.
Baillie Gifford holds 9.01% of Coupang, making it the No. 2 shareholder among institutional investors after SoftBank Vision Fund (SB Investment, 17.35%). Major Wall Street investors such as Morgan Stanley (4.08%), BlackRock (3.85%), T. Rowe Price (3.68%), JPMorgan (2.25%), and Fidelity Investments (FMR, 2.10%) also hold Coupang equity.
Bom Kim, Coupang's chair, does not hold Class A common stock and owns only 157,802,990 shares of Class B common stock (an 8.8% equity stake based on total shares). Unlike common stock, Class B common stock carries 29 times the voting rights. On a voting-rights basis, Kim's stake reaches 73.7%, leading many to assess that he exercises de facto control.
Beyond Baillie Gifford, investors including JPMorgan and Bank of America (BoA) also said the impact of the Coupang data leak would be limited. JPMorgan analyzed that the incident would have a limited effect on Coupang's competitiveness or potential customer churn. Bank of America (BoA) said there could be regulatory risk from the data leak, but the long-term impact on results would be limited.
In fact, after the recent data leak, the number of Coupang users in Korea increased. According to IGAworks Mobile Index, on the 1st, Coupang's daily active users (DAU) reached 17,988,845, the highest level since the company began tracking DAU. The average DAU from the 22nd to the 28th of last month, before the incident, was around 15.95 million.