Korea/Asia, Events, IPOs, Douglas Research Advisory

Douglas Kim

Korea/Asia, Events, IPOs

Equity Bottom-Up

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<p>In this insight, we go through the details of Tencent's numerous investments in Korea and try to estimate how much money it has made from them. Tencent started to invest in Korean companies about 14 years ago. Most of its big investments in Korea including Krafton Games, <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/netmarble-corporation" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:22839:1" rel="noopener">Netmarble Corporation (251270 KS)</a>, and <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/kakao-corp" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:15002:1" rel="noopener">Kakao Corp (035720 KS)</a> were made in the past decade. </p>
<p>We also discuss the US government's increasingly hostile stance on Tencent and other major Chinese tech companies and discuss the probabilities of the US government potentially following India's hard-line policy of removing major Chinese apps. </p>
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In this insight, we go through the details of Tencent's numerous investments in Korea and try to estimate how much money it has made from them. Tencent started to invest in Korean companies about 14 years ago. Most of its big investments in Korea including Krafton Games, Netmarble Corporation (251270 KS), and Kakao Corp (035720 KS) were made in the past decade. 
We also discuss the US government's increasingly hostile stance on Tencent and other major Chinese tech companies and discuss the probabilities of the US government potentially following India's hard-line policy of removing major Chinese apps. 


Tencent's Home-Run Investments in Korea & Will US Follow India's Move to Remove Tencent's Apps?

Cross Asset Strategy

<h2>Review of Top 10 Issues Related to Korean Stock Market, Economy, &amp; Politics in September 2020</h2><ul>
<li><div class="content-highlight"><strong>Value &amp; GARP outperforming Growth</strong></div></li>
<li><strong>Big Hit Entertainment IPO </strong></li>
<li><strong>Kakao Games IPO </strong></li>
<li><strong>IPOs of Kakao Pay, Kakao Bank, &amp; Kakao Page in 2021 </strong></li>
<li><strong>A merger of the three Celltrion companies </strong></li>
<li><strong>LG Chem's carve-out of its rechargeable battery business </strong></li>
<li><strong>Big rights offerings by Doosan Heavy Industries &amp; Doosan Fuel Cell </strong></li>
<li><strong>HDC Hyundai Development gives up on Asiana Airlines </strong></li>
<li><strong>Nikola's founder resigns - Impact on Hanwha Solutions</strong></li>
<li><strong>Samsung Electronics (Dividends) </strong></li>
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Review of Top 10 Issues Related to Korean Stock Market, Economy, &amp; Politics in September 2020
Value &amp; GARP outperforming Growth
Big Hit Entertainment IPO 
Kakao Games IPO 
IPOs of Kakao Pay, Kakao Bank, &amp; Kakao Page in 2021 
A merger of the three Celltrion companies 
LG Chem's carve-out of its rechargeable battery business 
Big rights offerings by Doosan Heavy Industries &amp; Doosan Fuel Cell 
HDC Hyundai Development gives up on Asiana Airlines 
Nikola's founder resigns - Impact on Hanwha Solutions
Samsung Electronics (Dividends) 


Korea Stock Market Monthly Recap #52 (September 2020)

Equity Capital Markets

<p><strong>Kakao Pay is getting ready to complete its IPO in 1H 2021</strong>. Kakao Pay is the leading mobile payment and digital wallet service provider in Korea. Kakao Pay's core service includes allowing users to request and send money to people in their KakaoTalk messenger contacts without using their bank account numbers. </p>
<p>Kakao Pay has recently hired KB Securities to be the lead underwriter of this IPO. Once Kakao Pay completes its IPO in 1H 2021, two other major Kakao affiliates including <strong>Kakao Bank</strong> and<strong> Kakao Page</strong> are expected to complete their IPOs in 2H 2021. </p>

Kakao Pay is getting ready to complete its IPO in 1H 2021. Kakao Pay is the leading mobile payment and digital wallet service provider in Korea. Kakao Pay's core service includes allowing users to request and send money to people in their KakaoTalk messenger contacts without using their bank account numbers. 
Kakao Pay has recently hired KB Securities to be the lead underwriter of this IPO. Once Kakao Pay completes its IPO in 1H 2021, two other major Kakao affiliates including Kakao Bank and Kakao Page are expected to complete their IPOs in 2H 2021. 

IPOs and Catalysts/Events, Global Equity Research Ltd

Arun George

IPOs and Catalysts/Events

Uncompromised, Independent, Conflict-Free Research

Global Equity Research Ltd

Global Equity Research was started in 2017 by a group of experienced research professionals. It was founded on a passionate belief in the importance and the need for uncompromised, independent, conflict-free research. We aim to provide differentiated and actionable primary and bottom up fundamental research.

<div><p><a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/yalla-group-ltd" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:29286:1" rel="noopener">Yalla Group Ltd (YALA US)</a> is the largest voice-centric social networking and entertainment platform in MENA as measured by revenue in 2019, according to Frost &amp; Sullivan. Yalla has launched its IPO at a price range of $7.00-9.00 per ADS. Existing shareholder, Orchid Asia, has indicated an interest in purchasing up to $30 million of the ADSs in the offering. Yalla will raise net proceeds of $135.4 million at the mid-point of the IPO price range. </p></div><div><div><div class="content-highlight"><p>In <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/insights/yalla-group-ipo-initiation-eat-pray-chat" target="_blank" rel="noopener">our initiation note</a>, we stated that Yalla has appealing fundamentals as it offers breakneck revenue growth with high margins and strong cash generation. Overall, we would be inclined to participate in the IPO at the proposed price range.</p></div></div></div>

Yalla Group Ltd (YALA US) is the largest voice-centric social networking and entertainment platform in MENA as measured by revenue in 2019, according to Frost &amp; Sullivan. Yalla has launched its IPO at a price range of $7.00-9.00 per ADS. Existing shareholder, Orchid Asia, has indicated an interest in purchasing up to $30 million of the ADSs in the offering. Yalla will raise net proceeds of $135.4 million at the mid-point of the IPO price range. In our initiation note, we stated that Yalla has appealing fundamentals as it offers breakneck revenue growth with high margins and strong cash generation. Overall, we would be inclined to participate in the IPO at the proposed price range.

Private Capital Markets

<p>In this insight, we provide the top 100 unicorns in Asia (including summaries), broken down by the major countries in Asia. China, India, and Korea lead the Asian countries in having the most number of Asian unicorns. We used the standard definition of a unicorn which refers to a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.</p>
<p>Clearly, one of the key differences in the global markets now as compared to a decade or two decades ago is the fact that the world's biggest venture capital and private equity firms are willing to invest a greater amount of capital in attractive Unicorns and "Pre-Unicorns" which has resulted in many of these private companies delaying their potential exit to IPO at later stages of their businesses. </p>
<p>There has been so much money made from the first generation tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Alibaba, and Tencent. Many of these companies were not profitable in their early stages of growth but later gained tremendous economies of scale. Therefore, many investors in the Asian unicorns that have seen the progress of the first-generation tech giants are willing to invest in promising, young companies without profitability now to see their business development take place which could potentially reward them with outstanding returns later on. </p>

In this insight, we provide the top 100 unicorns in Asia (including summaries), broken down by the major countries in Asia. China, India, and Korea lead the Asian countries in having the most number of Asian unicorns. We used the standard definition of a unicorn which refers to a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.
Clearly, one of the key differences in the global markets now as compared to a decade or two decades ago is the fact that the world's biggest venture capital and private equity firms are willing to invest a greater amount of capital in attractive Unicorns and "Pre-Unicorns" which has resulted in many of these private companies delaying their potential exit to IPO at later stages of their businesses. 
There has been so much money made from the first generation tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Alibaba, and Tencent. Many of these companies were not profitable in their early stages of growth but later gained tremendous economies of scale. Therefore, many investors in the Asian unicorns that have seen the progress of the first-generation tech giants are willing to invest in promising, young companies without profitability now to see their business development take place which could potentially reward them with outstanding returns later on. 

South Korea

Kakao Corp. provides Internet portal services such as news, free e-mail, and leisure information.  The Company also offers cross-platform mobile messaging application that allows users to exchange messages.

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Kakao Corp (035720 KS)

Tencent's Home-Run Investments in Korea & Will US Follow India's Move to Remove Tencent's Apps?

We go through the details of Tencent's numerous investments in Korea and try to estimate how much money it has made from them. Tencent started to...

Douglas Kim

Korea Stock Market Monthly Recap #52 (September 2020)

Review of Top 10 Issues Related to Korean Stock Market, Economy, Politics in September 2020

Douglas Kim

Initial Thoughts on the Kakao Pay IPO

Kakao Pay is the leading mobile payment and digital wallet service provider in Korea. Kakao Pay's core service includes allowing users to request...

Douglas Kim

Yalla Group IPO: Valuation Insights

Chindata (CD US) is a data centre operator which is backed by Bain Capital (57.17% shareholder), APG Strategic Real Estate Pool/Dutch pension...

Arun George

Top 100 Asian Unicorns

A unicorn is a term in business world to indicate a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.

Douglas Kim

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