3 BTS members sell HYBE shares, walking away with billions

Boy band BTS [JOONGANG PHOTO]

Three of the seven members of BTS have unloaded shares of HYBE, which they received during the company's initial public offering in 2020.

In total, the performers sold almost 10 billion won ($8.5 million) worth of stock. The company's shares, which have been performing poorly in recent weeks, declined 6.38 percent Thursday.

Jin sold 16,000 shares at 302,688 won each on Oct. 19 for 4.84 billion won, according to an electronic disclosure system run by the Financial Supervisory Service.

Three days later, J-Hope offloaded 5,601 shares at 332,063 won per share, which totaled 1.86 billion won. Band leader RM dumped a total of 10,385 shares Oct. 13 to Nov. 9 pocketing 3.25 billion won in total.

The total comes to 9.95 billion won.

They didn't manage to quite time the market top, as the shares peaked at 421,500 won intraday on Nov. 17. They are now trading at about 330,000 won.

When the agency went public, Bang Si-hyuk, founder and chairman of the company, granted 478,695 shares to BTS, to be shared equally among the seven members; each member was allotted 68,385 shares.

As of Nov. 29, Bang is the largest shareholder of HYBE, with 31.65 percent of the agency, followed by Netmarble, with 18.13 percent. Dunamu, operator of the Upbit cryptocurrency exchange, owns 5.54 percent of the company.

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