Mar 11, 2021 - Economy

South Korean e-commerce giant Coupang sees largest foreign IPO in U.S. since 2014

Dan Primack

An illustration showing a credit card as the body of a shopping cart. — Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Coupang, a South Korean e-commerce giant, raised $4.6 billion in its IPO. It priced shares at $35, above its upwardly revised range, for an initial market cap of $60 billion.

Why it matters: It's the largest U.S. IPO for a foreign issuer since Alibaba in 2014. And that tracks, given that Coupang is most often compared to Alibaba and Amazon (albeit with a smaller target market).

Details: The company reports a $475 million net loss on $12 billion in revenue for 2020, and had raised around $4 billion in private funding from firms like SoftBank Vision Fund, Greenoaks Capital, Maverick Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

The bottom line: "The e-commerce firm was founded by Korean-American billionaire Bom Suk Kim in 2010 and is headquartered in Seoul. It has more than 100 fulfilment and logistics centers in over 30 cities that provide next-day delivery for orders placed before midnight. Coupang employs 15,000 drivers in South Korea for its deliveries and has branched out into other services such as food and grocery delivery." — Saheli Roy Choudhury, CNBC

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South Korean e-commerce giant Coupang sees largest foreign IPO in U.S. since 2014

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