Krafton lowers price range for planned IPO

[KRAFTON]

Krafton has decided to lower the price range for its planned initial public offering (IPO), the game developer said Thursday.

This comes after the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) asked the company to submit a corrective registration statement last week. The FSS said “the statement submitted has not been prepared in conformity with the prescribed form for the statement.”

Krafton is the creator of popular online game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, known as PUBG.

According to the company’s revised IPO application, it cut the offering pricing band to between 400,000 won ($350) to 498,000 won. Originally, the range was set between 458,000 won and 557,000 won per share.

The available shares were also reduced to 8,654,230 shares from 10,060,230 shares.

With the lowered pricing band, Krafton aims to raise as much as 4.3 trillion won via the planned IPO, compared with the previously targeted 5.6 trillion won.

The IPO could give the company a market cap of between 19 trillion won and 24 trillion won. That’s down 4 trillion won compared to its original plan, but still higher than its rivals Nexon, NCSoft and Netmarble.

Nexon has a 21 trillion won market cap, while NCSoft is worth 18 trillion won and Netmarble 11 trillion won.

The gaming company’s retail marketing period, which had been set for July 14 and 15, has been postponed to Aug. 2 and 3.

Krafton is expected to make its official Kospi debut on Aug. 10.

BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]