이 기사는 2022년 04월 01일 08:06 thebell 에 표출된 기사입니다.

One Store, South Korea's app store developed by the country’s internet giant Naver and three telecom carriers, has received preliminary approval to list its shares on the main Kospi.

The Korea Exchange gave preliminary approval for One Store’s initial public offering (IPO) plan on Wednesday, about four months after the company applied for its preliminary review to the bourse operator in November 2021.

The app market operator plans to proceed with the IPO process by submitting a registration statement. The company is in talks with its underwriters – NH Investment & Securities, KB Securities and SK Securities – to decide the timing for submission of the registration statement. The company is expected to go public in the first half of this year if the remaining steps including bookbuilding and subscription go smoothly.

One Store is the nation’s leading app store launched in 2016. The company achieved 14 consecutive record-breaking quarterly performance and exceeded 1 trillion won ($825 million) in gross merchandise value last year, up 28% from 884.5 billion won in 2020. It logged 214.2 billion won in revenue in 2021, surpassing 200 billion won for the first time.

One Store aims to pursue its vision of global multi-OS (operating system) content platform through the planned listing. It plans to accelerate its domestic business and expand footprints into global markets this year.

The company also plans to focus on establishing global platform and securing contents to become one of the top 3 app stores in the world.

A cross-platform system called One Gameloop that One Store developed in collaboration with Chinese game giant Tencent is expected to be launched soon. The system allows a seamless gaming experience across PC, mobile and console platforms.

One Store recently changed the name of its content business from One Store Books to One Story. The company aims to expand the business throughout the story content value chain, from discovering intellectual property to content production.

Alongside the existing in-app payment business model, One Store plans to develop a new advertising business. Based on its abundant, high-quality data accumulated so far, One Store plans to introduce a platform that exposes advertisements optimized for customer behavior. (Reporting by Chan-mi Oh)