이 기사는 2021년 06월 23일 07시54분 thebell에 표출된 기사입니다

South Korea-based game publisher Krafton has set aside as much as 1.1 trillion won ($970 million) worth of shares for its employees as it prepares for an initial public offering (IPO), although the portion is unlikely to be fully subscribed given the size of the allotment per person.

Krafton said in a prospectus it allotted some two million shares, or 20% of the total shares offered in the IPO, to its employees based on local capital market regulations. The employee portion could be worth between 921.5 billion won and 1.12 trillion won based on the proposed price band of 458,000 won and 557,000 won.

It is the largest amount among multi-trillion IPO deals so far this year as the Krafton’s mega IPO is likely to be the nation’s largest ever. In the IPO of SK Bioscience, the employee quota was worth 298.3 billion won based on the upper end of the price range, while SK IE Technology (SKIET) set aside 449.1 billion won worth of shares for its employees.

SK Bioscience’s employee quota was undersubscribed by around 7 billion won and SKIET’s employee portion was undersubscribed by 152.6 billion won despite the relatively small per-person size of the portion compared to the Krafton deal.

SK Bioscience had 591 employees, with an average allocation of 500 million won per person while SKIET had 218 employees, which translates into an average allocation of 2 billion won per person. SKIET allocated 1.3 billion won per person on average.

Krafton has a total of 1330 employees, of which 1264 are full-time employees. Assuming that the price is set at the upper end of the range and only full-time employees participate, then the employee quota will be around 880 million won per person on average.

Krafton's estimated average per-person allocation is about 500 million won smaller than SKIET’s 1.3 billion won and 300 million won larger than SK Bioscience's 500 million won. Unsubscribed shares in the employee portion can be purchased by ordinary retail investors, which can buy up to 30% of the total shares offered in the IPO. (Reporting by Kyung-ju Lee)