이 기사는 2021년 08월 06일 07시58분 thebell에 표출된 기사입니다

Employees of South Korea-based game publisher Krafton showed lukewarm response to an employee subscription, resulting in 700 billion won ($612 million) worth of forfeited shares.

According to industry sources, the game maker behind PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds carried out the subscription of employee portion on August 2. The company allotted more than 1.73 million shares, or 20% of the total shares offered in the IPO (8.65 million shares), to its employees based on local capital market regulations. The employee portion is worth 862 billion won based on the IPO price of 498,000 won.

The company’s employee portion was undersubscribed due to the large size of the portion. Only 4.1% of the total IPO shares, worth 176.7 billion won, was subscribed by employees, with the remaining 685.3 billion won worth of shares left unsubscribed.

Mostly in their 20s and 30s, Many of the executives and employees were unable to participate in the subscription as they don’t have enough money to cover all shares allotted. Krafton has 1,264 full-time employees as of the prospectus submission date. The average per-person size of the portion amounts to 682 million won based on the initial employee portion.

Executives with ample funds also didn’t actively participate in the subscription as they already received enough stock options.

Unsubscribed shares in the employee portion will be allotted to insitutional and retail investors. Portions for retail investors and institutional investors have increased to 30% (1.29 trillion won) and 65.8% (2.84 trillion won), respectively, from the previous 25% and 55%.

Krafton will make its debut on the main KOSPI bourse on August 10. It will be the largest game company in the country by market capitalization, which is 24.35 trillion won based on the IPO price.

There is a possibility that the company will be included in the Kospi 200 Index, which will gives a rosy outlook on the game developer’s stock price in the longer term. (Reporting by Kyung-ju Lee)