Coupang, South Korea’s Amazon, raises $4.6 billion in American IPO

Coupang — a South Korean e-commerce giant that has been likened to Amazon — raised nearly $4.6 billion in the US’ largest initial public offering so far this year.

Coupang stock, which will start trading Thursday on the NYSE under the symbol CPNG, got priced above its target range of $32 to $34. That valuation amounts to more than a sixfold increase from 2018, when it fetched a $9 billion price tag in a private fundraising round.

Coupang has become South Korea’s answer to Amazon since it was founded in 2010. The company runs an online retail marketplace, delivers groceries and prepared foods, and offers a video streaming service called Coupang Play — similar to Amazon’s growing umbrella of businesses.

Like Amazon, Coupang went through a massive growth spurt last year as the coronavirus pandemic caused demand for online shopping to explode. Its workforce roughly doubled to more than 50,000 employees and its net revenues surged about 91 percent to nearly $12 billion.

About 35 percent of Coupang is owned by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, the Japanese investment giant that also backed DoorDash and other buzzy firms such as Slack, Uber and WeWork, the troubled office-sharing company.

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Allen & Company are the lead underwriters for the IPO.

Category: Technology

Source: New York Post