Naver’s Comic Platform Webtoon Entertainment Seeks To Raise $315M Through U.S. IPO
Digital comic artist Bae Jin-soo, who created the Naver webtoons 'Money Game' and 'Pie Game, which inspired Netflix's 'The 8 Show', draws at his studio in Seoul ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images
The California-based Webtoon begins trading on the Nasdaq Global Selection Market today and is offering 15 million in common stock at a price of $21 a share, with underwriters given the option to buy an additional 2.25 million shares at the same price in the next 30 days.
A subsidiary of Korean tech giant Naver Corporation, the U.S.-based Naver U.Hub, is separately being issued nearly 2.4 million common stock shares at the same IPO price, generating an additional $50M.
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Should the IPO reach the target Naver has set, it would value Webtoon at nearly $2.7B.
The platform offers access to thousands of Japanese and Korean webcomics and novels. It claimed to have nearly 170 million monthly active users in more than 150 countries at the end of March, with more than 24 million creators. It also houses web comic and manga app Line Manga, web novel platform Wattpad and Korean web comic platform Naver Webtoon.
Webtoon’s status has grown as interesting around content from Japan and Korea continues to grow, especially in the U.S., though the ‘webtoon’ industry, as it’s known, has been operational for two decades and is predicted by analysts to become a $60B business by 2030.
More and more TV and film adaptations are coming out of the sector in genres such as fantasy and romance. Just this month, Deadline revealed James Van Der Beek is starring in Tubi Original Sidelined: The QB and Me, which is based on a Wattpad story from Tay Marley, for example. Toronto-based Wattpad and Webtoon merged their production operations in 2021 to form Wattpad Webtoon Studios, which former Fox entertainment chief David Madden leads.