| Chung Tae-young, Hyundai Card CEO |
Hyundai Card, Big Hit Entertainment and Lotte Hotel are considering adjusting the dates of their firms' IPOs ― listings that were expected to vitalize this year's market.
Hyundai Card selected NH Investment & Securities and Citigroup Global Markets as its underwriters last November and had planned to discuss the time and procedure of the IPO as soon as they finished submitting documentation to investors.
However, the spread of the new coronavirus here has made the situation worse for card businesses. From February 1 to 23, the total amount of credit approved for personal credit cards plunged by 45 percent compared to the same period in the previous month.
| Bang Si-hyuk, Big Hit Entertainment founder and CEO |
The situation is also rocky for Big Hit Entertainment, the label behind global K-pop group BTS.
Big Hit Entertainment's valuation in the IPO market was estimated to be between 2 trillion won and 4 trillion won after the entertainment company reported an operating profit of 97.5 billion won last year, which is more than YG Entertainment, SM Entertainment and JYP Entertainment combined.
The entertainment agency needs to go public this year if it wants to get a high initial offering price because the only way to get more money is if BTS becomes more popular than it is now.
Though not an impossible task, it is difficult for K-pop groups to maintain long-term popularity, especially when members are required to leave to complete their mandatory military service. BTS' oldest member, Jin, said that no details have been fixed but that he will fulfill his duty when the time comes, which will most likely be within a year.
To make the situation worse, Big Hit Entertainment has recently canceled four BTS concerts in Seoul amid the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the country. The group is scheduled to go on tour in the U.S., starting in Santa Clara, California in April but this could also be canceled due to the virus.
Cancelation of the tour would cause some financial damage to Big Hit Entertainment as concerts are a major source of income in the global entertainment industry.
"It is important that the novel coronavirus situation gets settled in April. We are witnessing more and more countries taking measures to ban people arriving from Korea or to quarantine them. Korean musicians cannot get quarantined for two weeks in other countries just to perform concerts for two days," said Park Jeong-yup, a researcher at Mirae Asset Daewoo.
An official at Big Hit Entertainment said nothing has been decided and she could not comment on the specifics of the company's IPO.
"We don't know if BTS will move forward with their plan for the U.S. tour. For now, we will have to monitor the coronavirus situation there before making a decision," the Big Hit Entertainment official said.
Hotel Lotte is also delaying their IPO plan. It was predicted that the hotel franchise would go public as soon as Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin quit his job as the chief executive officer of Hotel Lotte. This was seen as a move to reduce the risk of failure of the company's IPO that could be affected by assessments of the CEO's leadership and morality.
However, its duty free business, a major source of income, was struck hard by the virus in the first two months of this year and Hotel Lotte could postpone its IPO until next year.