Kakao climbs to No. 5 as S. Korea’s largest firm based on market cap

Kakao Group started off as the operator of the popular KaKatoTalk, a mobile messenger app and over the years, it has aggressively expanded its business to new territories. It succeeded every time and now it is one of South Korea’s fifth-largest business companies in terms of market cap.

How Kakao grew from KakaoTalk

Yonhap News Agency reported that financial data gathered from the Korea Exchange and Infomax, a market researcher, shows that the combined market capitalization of all Kakao firms is estimated to be ₩73.9 trillion or $65.1 billion as of June 18. This is said to be a big increase from just ₩13.2 trillion by the end of 2019.

The first four conglomerates that came before Kakao Group is Samsung Group at first place with ₩751 trillion market cap, followed by SK Group with ₩200 trillion, LG Group with ₩158 trillion, and finally Hyundai Motor Group at no. 4 with its estimated ₩152 trillion market value.

The latest development that boosted Kakao’s earnings recently was its advertising, various content business and e-commerce. The positive outlook for the initial public offerings of its financial subsidiaries before this year ends also helped push the company’s revenues up. In any case, shares of Kakao was up 4.73 percent last weekend closing at ₩155,000

Kakao Bank preparing for July’s IPO

One of Kakao’s subsidiaries that is preparing for IPO is the Kakao Bank. After getting preliminary approval, the app-based bank is now working toward an initial public offering next month.

With this, the company will be adding a bank stock under the lending category and this is happening for the first time in 27 years, as per Pulse News. The last bank stock on the Korea Exchange was said to be the Industrial Bank of Korea in 1994.

Late last week, the Korea Exchange granted preliminary approval for Kakao Bank’s plans for IPO. This gives permission for the online-based bank to start its schedule to go public on KOSPI in July. Kakao Bank will be sharing more details about its IPO syllabus.

Meanwhile, Market observers predicted that Kakao Bank’s IPO may fetch about ₩2 trillion or $1.8 billion.