Big Hit IPO: Shares in managers of BTS soar on market debut

SEOUL, South Korea—Shares in the management agency of K-Pop group BTS rocketed on their stock market debut Thursday, making an instant billionaire of its chairman and boosting the seven band members’ own fortunes.

The initial public offering of shares in Big Hit Entertainment saw staggering demand, with the public section oversubscribed more than 600 times and applicants receiving only a tiny fraction of their requests.

The firm’s centerpiece asset BTS have risen to global stardom in recent years, cementing their prominence in the US, the world’s biggest music market, in August with their all-English track “Dynamite” topping the Billboard Hot 100.

The IPO price was set at 135,000 won ($118) but opened at double that on the Kospi exchange and within minutes spiked to its daily limit of 351,000 won, platforms showed.

It later fell back to close at 258,000 won but Big Hit still had a market capitalization of 8.7 trillion won—$7.6 billion—putting it among South Korea’s top 40 most valuable companies, just behind cosmetics-maker Amore Pacific and Hana Financial Group.

Big Hit founder and CEO Bang Si-hyuk—who retains a 36 percent stake in the firm—was worth $3.8 billion at the peak, according to Bloomberg News.

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— BTS_official (@bts_bighit) October 15, 2020

At a listing ceremony, he thanked “all the fans who have always loved and believed in Big Hit’s artists and content” and “our remarkable artists of whom we’re so proud.”

The flotation also boosted the BTS members’ own wealth—Mr. Bang gave each of them more than 68,000 shares in August, worth around $20 million at the day’s high and totaling 1.4 percent of the company.

Analysts had expected the shares to power upwards.

“Considering all the information about the firm now available, the IPO price could be the lowest price we will ever see,” Park Sung-ho of Yuanta Securities told AFP.

Some investors cashed in straight away. “I received two shares and just sold them. With 260,000 won in profit, I will just buy a winter coat,” said one poster on the South’s biggest internet portal Naver.

Others warned it would continue to decline after the initial euphoria, with one comment reading: “The entertainment industry is such a fast-changing sector and a management agency entirely dependent on only one group is not that attractive businesswise.” – Agence France-Presse