K Bank drops 2025 IPO in 3rd Kospi listing cancellation

K Bank, a South Korean online lender, said on Wednesday it has again canceled its initial public offering plan amid the languid stock market and would resume its IPO process in 2026.

Industry sources said its IPO met with tepid response in bookbuilding due to the large volume of shares set to be unloaded by its existing shareholders, including card processing company BC Card, relative to other public listings.

Its heavy dependence on cryptocurrency investors, which account for about one-fifth of its deposits, was cited as another factor putting off investors.

K Bank was planning to make its third attempt to list on the Kospi main bourse around February.

To push ahead with the listing, it lowered its valuation from the 4 trillion to 5.3 trillion won ($2.8 billion-$3.7 billion) it proposed in October of last year, or 9,500-12,000 won per share to raise up to 984 billion won. But it gave up its second IPO bid since 2022 as investors balked at the valuation.

This month, it was preparing to file a prospectus for an IPO with the Korea Exchange and make a trading debut in February. It could have been South Korea’s largest IPO in 2025.

K Bank is determined to complete its IPO by July 2026, a condition attached to its rights offering of 1.15 trillion won in 2021.

It raised a total of 725.0 billion won from financial investors, including MBK Partners, Bain Capital, MG Community Credit Cooperatives, Shinhan Alternative Investment Management, JS Private Equity and Com2us Corp. in 2021. It also received 425.0 billion won from its largest shareholder BC Card in a new share sale the same year.

Unless it goes public by July 2026, those financial investors will be able to exercise tag-along rights to unload K Bank shares simultaneously with BC Card’s sale of shares in the online lender. Otherwise, they can sell their K Bank shares back to the card processing company.

BC Card holds a 33.72% stake in K Bank as of the end of September 2024.

NH Investment & Securities Co. and KB Securities Co. are joint bookrunners of K Bank’s IPO.

Write to Jeong-Cheol Bae at bjc@hankyung.com
 


Yeonhee Kim edited this article.