이 기사는 2021년 09월 30일 08시07분 thebell에 표출된 기사입니다

Kakao Group affiliates are facing scrutiny ahead of their upcoming initial public offerings (IPO) due to the government's crackdown on the country's top messaging service operator.

Kakao Mobility, South Korea’s largest taxi-hailing company, has indefinitely postponed its plan to select its IPO underwriters, while Kakao Group’s payment services unit Kakao Pay has pushed back its IPO to November, according to industry sources.

Kakao Pay’s listing was supposed to be completed by now and Kakao Mobility was originally expected to make its stock market debut in the first half of next year.

Both companies had intended to go public at high valuations based on the scalability of the Kakao’s platform, but retreated amid growing concerns regarding the impact of tightened regulations on their core business model.

Kakao Mobility is likely to resume its IPO process by discovering and expanding a new revenue model instead of relying on the controversial Smart Call service, which charges extra fees for calling a taxi faster, given that the listing deadline promised with its financial investors, including the TPG-led consortium, is 2022. Its listing is highly likely to take place after the first half of next year.

Industry insiders expect the annual National Assembly audit in October to be the biggest watershed in setting up their IPO timeline. Lawmakers are widely expected to deal with the issues regarding Kakao during the annual audit.

But the concern is that the pending IPOs are having an impact on other Kakao Group affiliates’ possible IPO schedule amid toughened regulations in the domestic market.

It may be a relief that next possible IPO candidates operate businesses that are relatively free from regulations, including content and artificial intelligence-based B2B services.

Some analysts said that an absence of a control tower in charge of establishing a group-wide IPO strategy triggered the current situation. The group has failed to comprehensively respond to issues that each affiliate has faced, including regulatory risks and an overlap of business areas.

Kakao Group is expected to face criticism for a while although it announced a series of measures aimed at co-prosperity with small business operators.

It was also a rare case that KakaoBank and Kakao Pay, both of which are Kakao’s finance arms focusing on the techfin business, decided to go public together in July.

“Kakao Pay pushed back its IPO schedule due to the financial authorities' decision, and the listing was delayed once again because of the newly introduced Financial Consumer Protection Act,” said an industry source. “The group’s failure to coordinate the schedule by identifying each affiliate’s IPO needs and risks has had a butterfly effect on Kakao Pay.” (Reporting by Seok-cheol Choi)