Internet lender K Bank gets green light for IPO

South Korea’s first internet-only lender K Bank on Tuesday received preliminary approval from the Korea Exchange to go public on the country’s main bourse, but its IPO timing has not yet been determined.

K Bank, 33.7% owned by telecom-focused KT Group’s BC Card Co., had initially planned to list on the Kospi market by the end of this year as it pledged last year to new shareholders, including Bain Capital and MBK Partners.

It got the green light after swinging to a net profit in the first half of this year from a shortfall in all of 2021.

But K Bank may adjust its IPO schedule to gauge market interest after a number of domestic IPO candidates withdrew their listing plans, or sharply cut valuations to proceed with public offerings.

BC Card, the country’s largest payment processing company for banks, is its largest shareholder with a 33.7% stake.

Other major shareholders include Woori Bank with a 12.8% stake. Private equity firms Bain Capital and MBK Partners each hold an 8.2% stake after they participated in the 1.25 trillion won rights offering last year.

NH Investment & Securities Co. holds another 5.5% stake in the online lender.

Under the terms of the new shares issued in 2021, K Bank needs to buy back about 60% of the new issues, worth 725 billion won ($520 million), from some of its new shareholders if it fails to go public within this year.

To shore up its capital base, it is also under pressure to move forward with an IPO at its earliest possible time.

The shares, for which investors are allowed to exercise a call option, are not included in equity capital defined by the Bank for International Settlements.

Earlier this year, analysts estimated the internet lender’s value between 6 trillion and 8 trillion won ($4.3 billion-$5.7 billion).

However, since its bigger rival KakaoBank’s market cap shrank by about 70% since its market debut in August 2021 to 12 trillion won, K Bank's estimated value will likely decline.

KakaoBank has more than twice as many customers as K Bank. 

K Bank was launched in 2017. Its customer number increased by 660,000 to 7.8 million in the first half of this year. Its loan book swelled by 23% to 8.7 trillion won, with the volume of deposits up 8% to 12.2 trillion won during the same period.

It reported a net profit of 45.7 billion won in the first half, versus an 8.4 billion won loss in the year-earlier period.

NH Investment & Securities Co., JPMorgan, Citigroup Global Market and Samsung Securities Co. are joint bookrunners.

Write to Seok-Cheol Choi at dolsoi@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article.