November 22, 2024

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Kim Jun-koo, founder and CEO of Webtoon Entertainment, speaks during a press conference in New York, June 27. (Yonhap)

Shares in online comics platform Webtoon Entertainment, a subsidiary of Naver in the US, rose around 10 percent in the first day of trading on Nasdaq on Thursday, giving the company a valuation of $2.92 billion.

Webtoon Entertainment’s stock first opened at $21.30, and traded as high as $24. The stock price eased off the peak to close at $23.

Through the initial public offering, Webtoon Entertainment is estimated to have raised $315 million, selling 15 million shares. The company earlier announced the pricing of its IPO of 15 million shares of common stock at a price to the public of $21 per share.

Naver’s stake in Webtoon Entertainment came to 63.4 percent after the IPO, followed by LY Corporation with 24.7 percent.

The listing of Webtoon Entertainment is part of Naver's strategy to accelerate the platform’s global expansion.

Webtoon Entertainment Founder and CEO Kim Jun-koo said during a press conference in New York that Webtoon Entertainment's Nasdaq debut meant the company’s journey to become the "Disney of Asia" was halfway complete.

Kim said his dream is to grow Webtoon Entertainment “to have distribution channels and intellectual content comparable to those of Disney” and “to last longer than a hundred years like Disney has.”

Kim added that he believes Webtoon Entertainment “was able to distribute competitive intellectual properties to more readers because of the numerous individual artists working with us.”

California-based Webtoon Entertainment is an online comics company under South Korea’s internet giant Naver. Founded in 2005, the company first started as a side project by its current CEO Kim, who was a search engineer at Naver. Since then Webtoon has thousands of stories spanning over 20 genres, attracting international readers in Asia, North America and Europe.

Around 55 million episodes have been created by 24 million creators across the world, and some of the online comics have been adapted into drama series on streaming services, such as Hellbound, Bloodhounds and Sweet Home.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)