이 기사는 2021년 07월 23일 07시21분 thebell에 표출된 기사입니다

A blockbuster debut of Krafton, South Korea’s gaming company behind PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), is going smoothly, with domestic and foreign institutional investors showing strong interest in its growth potential.

Krafton held two separate online meetings with analysts and fund managers on Wednesday, according to industry sources. Around 30 analysts at major brokerage firms at home and abroad participated in the meeting.

Krafton founder Chang Byung-gyu attended the meeting and answered questions, which were mainly about its new mobile title, PUBG: New State. The new title is scheduled to launch in September or October, which is immediately after Krafton’s market debut.

“The company said the PUBG: New State has already racked up 25 million pre-registrations only through Google Android market since the beginning of this year,” said an industry source. “It added that the number of users will significantly increase after its testing on the iOS market in August.”

Krafton relaunched the PUBG Mobile in India earlier this month. The game had been distributed by China’s Tencent, but was banned by the Indian government in the second half of 2020 due to border disputes between the two countries. Krafton said the PUBG Mobile already reached 40 million downloads in the Indian market.

Krafton is running a two-week bookbuilding process from July 14. The company seeks to raise between 3.5 trillion won ($3.04 billion) and 4.3 trillion won by selling shares at a range of 400,000 won and 498,000 won each, which makes Krafton’s valuation between 19.6 trillion won and 24.4 trillion won.

The IPO was reportedly 20~30 times oversubscribed by foreign institutional investors on the first day alone, with most of them bidding at the highest price of 498,000 won or beyond.

The subscription for domestic institutional investors started on July 20 and the competition is said to be fierce as well. (Reporting by Kyung-ju Lee)