Webtoon Entertainment priced its IPO at the top end of its expected range, raising around USD 315m in the US market. The company is majority owned by South Korea’s Naver.
Webtoon stock [NASDAQ:WBTN] was priced at USD 21 (15m shares). The company, which is based in Los Angeles, is now valued at $2.67bn as a result of the offering. It was founded in 2005 as a side project for its CEO Junkoo Kim while he was working as a search engine engineer at Naver.
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The IPO performed in direct contrast with parent Naver [KRX:35420] which is seeing its stock struggling in the Korean market at the moment. Webtoon stock closed its first trading day at $23, up from the IPO price of $21. It was also nudging past the $23 mark in after hours trading in the US on Friday.
Webtoon is an online storytelling platform that supports thousands of titles across genres like fantasy, action, romance and horror. It is tapped into the extremely lucrative growth dynamics of Japanese manga, like web comics and apps. This includes the likes of Line Manga, Wattpad and Naver Webtoon.
The stock has attracted some of the bigger hitters on Wall Street, including fund manager BlackRock NYSE:BLK which said it would be interested in buying USD 5om in shares as part of the IPO.
Webtoon Entertainment did flag up conflicts of interest issues between major shareholders Naver and Line Yahoo when it originally filed. While Naver owns 63% of Webtoon, Line Yahoo is in for another 24%. Line Yahoo is in turn 65% owned by A Holdings, a JV of Naver and SoftBank.
LandBridge prices IPO at $17 with investor in for 32%
LandBridge, a company which acquires surface acreage in the oil-rich Delaware Basin in West Texas and New Mexico, said it would be listing in New York at USD 17 per share. Some 14.5m shares are on offer, which are priced at under the existing range being asked for, which sat in the USD 19-22 range. A brand new investor said it would potentially be on board for 32% of the deal at USD 80m.
LandBridge was formed by Five Point Energy along with portfolio company WaterBridge to acquire, manage and expand a strategic land position in the Delaware Basin. This will support the development of WaterBridge’s large scale produced water handling infrastructure as well as helping to encourage wider commercial and industrial development.
Currently LandBridge owns 220,000 surface acres in and around the Delaware Basin. It has multiple revenue streams including from the use of surface acreage.
Alumis stock slides following down-sized New York IPO
Shares in New York-listed bio-pharma stock Alumis [NASDAQ:ALMS] were down 17% at the end of last week. This came in the wake of a down-sized IPO on the US market. The company sold 13.1m shares in last week’s IPO and also managed 2.5m shares in a private placement to one of its investors priced at $16.
Alumis is based in San Francisco and provides therapies for patients who live with immune-mediated diseases and now need alternatives to existing treatments. It registered a net loss of USD 155m in 2023, compared with USD 111.9m a year earlier.
Alumis had been marketing 17.65m shares which were priced at between USD16-18.
