이 기사는 2019년 12월 19일 08:00 thebell 에 표출된 기사입니다.

The Berlin-headquartered Delivery Hero (DH) has agreed to buy South Korea's top food delivery app operator, Woowa Brothers, for 4.75 trillion won, marking the biggest deal in the country’s M&A market this year.

Woowa Brothers owns Baedal Minjok, an app more commonly known as Baemin. Financial investors who put money in Woowa Brothers are expected to achieve high returns on the latest deal. Especially, the market is paying attention how much return Goldman Sachs Principal Investment Area (PIA) will secure from this deal after hitting the jackpot with the Carver Korea deal.

DH, one of the world’s largest online food delivery groups, will acquire a 87 percent stake in the Seoul-based company that is owned by outside investors, DH said on December 13. The remaining 13 percent stake held by Woowa Brothers’ senior management, including company founder Kim Bong-jin, will be later converted into DH shares. Investors who own 87 percent stake will exit the company all at once. The deal values Woowa Brothers at 4 billion dollar (4.75 trillion won).

Goldman Sachs PIA has invested in the company since November 2014. Back then, Goldman Sachs PIA put in around 40 billion won in Woowa Brothers, with its enterprise value estimated at about 150 billion won.

After that China’s Hillhouse Capital Group, Korea’s internet portal giant Naver, Sequoia Capital, and GIC, the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund backed the company, and its valuation has skyrocketed.

When Hillhouse Capital Group invested in Woowa Brothers in 2016, the company’s valuation was set at 350 billion won and when Naver put money in the company in 2017, its valuation increased to around 700 billion won. By the time the Korean food delivery app operator attracted approximately 360 billion won from Sequoia Capital and GIC in 2018, its valuation reached three trillion won. Currently Hillhouse Capital is the largest shareholder of Woowa Brothers.

Woowa Brothers’ shares outstanding were more than 1.15 million as of the end of 2014 and Goldman Sachs PIA reportedly acquired around 22 percent stake through its investment at that time.

As a result of the capital increases over the past few years, Woowa Brothers’ shares outstanding increased to more than 10 million as of the end of 2018. Assuming there has been no big change in the number of shares in 2019 and taking one bonus issue of shares into account, Goldman Sachs PIA’s stake in Woowa Brothers now is estimated at 16.4 percent.

Based on Woowa Brothers’ valuation of 4.75 trillion won, the value of Goldman Sachs PIA’s 16.4 percent stake in the company is likely to be around 780 billion won. It is estimated that Goldman Sachs PIA returned more than 18-fold with an investment horizon of five years, considering it put 40 billion in the company in 2014.

Goldman Sachs PIA attracted the market’s attention before the latest Woowa Brothers deal. A consortium of Goldman Sachs PIA and Bain Capital sold a 95.39 percent stake in Carver Korea, known for its brand name AHC, to Unilever for three trillion won in 2017. The consortium acquired a 60.39 stake in Carver Korea in 2016 and pocketed 1.5 trillion won from the exit of the company, in just one year.

(By reporter Han Hee-yeon)