Advertisement of Webtoon Entertainment (Courtesy of Webtoon Entertainment)
Webtoon Entertainment Inc., South Korean tech giant Naver Corp.’s online comics platform, said on Thursday that it will raise $315 million by issuing 150 million shares via its US initial public offering.
The Los Angeles-based company, which oversees Naver’s Korean and global webtoon business, has set its share price at $21 apiece, the upper limit of the indicated range. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Evercore and Deutsche Bank are among the lead underwriters.
Valued at around $2.7 billion via the IPO, the company’s shares will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker WBTN from June 27.
Webtoon Entertainment is expected to boost its intellectual property-related businesses in North America. By securing IPs of original content of digital novels and comics, the company will accelerate production of films.
Established in 2005 by Naver’s former search engineer Kim Jun-koo, Webtoon Entertainment is the parent of Seoul-based Naver Webtoon Ltd., one of the world’s largest online comics platforms.
Webtoon Entertainment’s other subsidiaries include LINE Digital Frontier Corp. in Japan and Wattpad in Canada, a digital comics and novel platform.
By Seok-Cheol Choi
dolsoi@hankyung.com
Jihyun Kim edited this article.