Korea’s largest online portal Naver plans to list its messenger Line both in New York and Tokyo stock exchanges.
Naver Line is now headquartered in Japan. According to industry sources on May 21, Line will be listed before the IPO of Japan Post Service’s new shares which are slated to be issued within this year.
To shun competition with Japan Post, Line set the schedule of its IPO at around September. Once listed, Line’s market capitalization is expected to reach around 1 trillion yen (US$8.3 billion).
A Naver official said, “We are considering an IPO as one of several options. We have not yet made final decisions on when, where, and what prices we will list Line.” A spokesperson for Line Japan concurred, “We have not yet decided whether or not to make the IPO.”
By Oh Hae-young
