이 기사는 2022년 02월 14일 08:04 thebell 에 표출된 기사입니다.

Krafton chairman Chang Byung-gyu attended a quarterly earnings call for the first time since the South Korean game developer went public last summer, as part of efforts to defend the company's share price, which faces the potential downward pressure as the lock-up period ends.

In Thursday’s earnings call, Krafton chief executive Kim Chang-han provided an update on the company’s strategy for 2022 and chairman Chang also took questions from investors for almost an hour.


This contrasts with the previous earnings call in November. At the time, finance chief Bae Dong-geun was the company’s only top executive to attend the event, which lasted for about half the duration of the latest call.

This change coincides with a sharp decline in Krafton shares. After disappointing results of “Battlegrounds: New State,” the company’s new title launched in November, its stock price plunged more than 55% to 257,500 won ($214.78) on January 28, from a high of 580,000 won on November 17.

Especially, the six-month lock-up period for institutional investors expired on Thursday, potentially creating an overhang on the Krafton stock.

In August last year, Krafton raised 4.3 trillion won in its initial public offering, with 31.66% of the total listed shares owned by institutional investors. The stock now trades about 48% below its IPO price of 498,000 won per share.


In an effort to defend the stock price, Krafton’s top executives said in the earnings call that it is working on an upgrade of the New State game and also proposed plans to boost shareholder returns.

Krafton had retained earnings of 551 billion won as of the end of September last year, which seemed insufficient yet to start paying dividends given its investment needs to achieve growth.

However in order to secure funds for dividends, the company plans to seek shareholder approval at its annual general meeting scheduled for March to transfer capital reserve to capital surplus. Krafton had 3.8 trillion won in capital reserve as of the end of September 2021 thanks to the proceeds from the IPO.

Chairman Chang also revealed his intention to purchase the company’s shares himself, saying that he believes the stock is undervalued in the mid to long term.

“I believe Krafton is undervalued given our new businesses with the strong growth potential, which will no doubt accelerate the company’s growth in the future,” Chang said. (Reporting by Won-ji Hwang)