이 기사는 2022년 01월 27일 07:58 thebell 에 표출된 기사입니다.

South Korea’s digital lender K bank, which recently received proposals from investment banks, will start a three-day presentation competition to select firms to handle its initial public offering (IPO).

It is said four Korean mega-sized investment banks and foreign brokerage firms will make presentations. The digital lender’s IPO has attracted strong attention amid big success of Kakao Bank’s market debut last year.

Presentations will be held for three days from Wednesday to Friday, said industry sources. The digital lender decided to hold the process only two days after it received proposals from banks. K bank seems to speed up the IPO process as it aims to go public within this year and file for a preliminary review in the first half.

Given that presentation competition usually takes two days, K bank decided to take time selecting its underwriters by sufficiently reviewing their strategies so that it can get a higher valuation. Presentations will also give the digital bank opportunities to get consulting about its future business strategies.

Domestic and foreign investment banks are drawing up strategies to make presentations. “They continue to review their presentation strategies until the last minute, mulling whether their top executives will attend the presentations in person.”

Four top-ranked domestic securities firms – Mirae Asset Securities, Samsung Securities, NH Investment & Securities and Shinhan Investment – and six foreign investment banks are expected to participate in the presentation competition.

Industry sources expect NH Investment & Securities to be the strongest candidate to get selected. The brokerage firm is one of the major shareholders of K bank, with a 4.84% stake. The broker’s stake in the digital bank decreased from 10% as it decided not to participate in K bank’s rights offering last year.

Investment banking sources expect K bank’s corporate value to be about 10 trillion won after the listing. Methodology of calculating the value will likely be the main issue at the presentations as K bank has different profit structure from its peers. The lender is highly likely to benchmark another internet-only bank Kakao Bank, which went public last year.

The digital bank turned profitable last year, recording a net profit of 8.4 billion won on revenue of 190.2 billion won in the first three quarters of 2021. In 2020, it generated a net loss of 105.4 billion won on revenue of 105.4 billion won. (Reporting by Sang-won Lee)