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Netmarble mulls IPO on NASDAQ

February 19, 2016
Netmarble senior advisor Bang Joon-hyuk speaks during a press conference at the Glad Hotel in Yeouido, Seoul, Thursday. (Courtesy of Netmarble Games)

Netmarble senior advisor Bang Joon-hyuk speaks during a press conference at the Glad Hotel in Yeouido, Seoul, Thursday. (Courtesy of Netmarble Games)

By Yoon Sung-won

Netmarble Games, the nation’s largest mobile game company, will push for an initial public offering (IPO) around the end of the year.

“The IPO decision has been made to preemptively respond to the global market by preparing for aggressive investments in mergers and acquisitions and future businesses,” Netmarble Games Chief Executive Kwon Young-sik said at a press conference in Seoul, Thursday. “We expect to be able to list the company by the end of this year or early next year.”

Stressing that Netmarble has had average annual growth of 68 percent in the past three years, Kwon said the company has proven it can sustain growth as a game development and publishing firm. He did not elaborate on the IPO’s expected scale.
The company revealed it is considering listing on the NASDAQ for greater presence in the U.S. market.

“Though listing the company in Korea will be meaningful, making an IPO on the NASDAQ will be a great boost in our presence and corporate value in the U.S. market, with much less marketing expenses,” Netmarble’s senior advisor, Bang Joon-hyuk, said. “We have not decided on which market to list the company. We will thoroughly contemplate the focus on our future strategy and discuss with experts once we choose the company that will oversee the IPO procedure.”

Bang also said Netmarble may list on the relatively stable KOSPI, instead of the tech-heavy KOSDAQ, considering the business’ size.

Its IPO has drawn keen market attention because the company has grown rapidly to be No. 2 in the game industry here, replacing NCSOFT in terms of annual sales.

Netmarble Games posted 1.07 trillion won ($871.76 million) in sales last year, up 86 percent year-on-year. It broke the 1 trillion won mark for the first time. On such rapid growth, Bang said the company gave stock options to its employees at the end of last year and plans more next month.

He said the company has set its next sales goal at 2 trillion won.

“I expect that we will be able to achieve the goal by 2017, though hardly in 2016,” Bang said.

Netmarble also said it will merge its development subsidiaries, Netmarble Monster and Netmarble ST, to build a larger game studio specialized in massive development projects based on global game intellectual properties (IPs).

At Thursday’s event, Netmarble showcased 28 mobile games scheduled to be released this year. Among them are games based on globally popular characters such as Disney’s “Everyone’s Marble”, as well as characters based on NCSOFT’s intellectual property, including “Blade & Soul” and the “Lineage” series.

The company said 19 of the new titles will be role-playing games. It said it will develop localized games that can satisfy the diverse demands of major overseas markets in China, Japan and the United States.