SK, KTCU see gains from Chinese startup’s Nasdaq IPO

SK Group and the Korean Teachers’ Credit Union (KTCU) may walk away with handsome gains from their joint investment of 360 billion won ($314 million) in a Chinese data center operator that listed on Nasdaq last month.

In August, their $1 billion co-investment fund purchased a 9% stake in Chindata Group Holdings for 360 billion won in pre-IPO investment.

Shortly after the pre-IPO share sale, the Beijing-based startup raised $540 million in a September initial public offering. Bain Capital is its biggest shareholder after the US private equity firm acquired Chindata for $570 million in May 2019.

Based on its market value of $5 billion, their co-investment is likely to generate about 170 billion won ($150 million) in valuation gains.

The data company operates nine hyper-scale data centers, which can accommodate over 100,000 web servers.

SK Group’s holding company and the teachers’ savings fund launched a $1 billion co-investment fund last year, with each of them putting up $500 million.

Recently, KTCU secured $154 million from its investment in the US cloud-based platform provider Ellie Mae in just one and a half years, after a US private equity firm exited the startup.

By Junho Cha

Yeonhee Kim edited this article