Coupang, the South Korea-headquartered online marketplace backed by telecommunications and internet group SoftBank, is floating on the New York Stock Exchange today in an upsized $4.55bn initial public offering.
The company priced 130 million shares at $35.00 each. It had set a price range of $32 to $34 for 120 million shares, 100 million of which were set to be issued by the company and 20 million sold by its investors. It is the largest IPO so far this year.
Founded in 2010, Coupang runs an e-commerce platform that offers a wide range of consumer goods through a same-day delivery service. It increased revenue 91% year on year to almost $12bn in 2020 and cut its net loss from $699m to $475m.
SoftBank invested $1bn in the company in 2015 in return for a reported 20% stake, before providing a further $2bn three years later, in a deal reportedly valuing it at $9bn.
Sequoia Capital, BlackRock Private Equity Partners,Wellington Management Company, Greenoaks Capital Management, LaunchTime and Rose Park Advisors’ Disruptive Innovation Fund are among Coupang’s earlier backers.
Bom Suk Kim, Coupang’s chairman and CEO, held all of its 176 million class B shares prior to the offering. The rest of the investors own class A shares, with SoftBank Vision Fund holding 39.4% pre-IPO, Greenoaks Capital 19.8%, Maverick Holdings 7.7% and Rose Park 6%.
BlackRock was set to sell nearly 17.5 million shares, which would total approximately $612m at the IPO price.
Goldman Sachs, Allen & Company, JP Morgan and Citigroup are lead book-running managers for the offering while HSBC, Deutsche Bank Securities, UBS Investment Bank, Mizuho Securities and CLSA are bookrunners.
