Group BTS / Photo = Yonhap News
BTS’ agency Big Hit(248,000 +2.06%)We raised our target price by 20~30%. The company’s announcement on the 2nd that it acquired Ithaca Holdings, an American entertainment agency, had an impact.
Big Hit closed the deal at 248,000 won, up 2.06% (5000 won) on the 5th. In the middle of the market, it rose by 9.05% to 265,000 won.
Big Hit decided to acquire a 100% stake in Ithaca Holdings for about 1.2 trillion won. Ithaca Holdings is in charge of the management of famous overseas singers such as Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, and Black Eyed Peas. Scooter Brown (real name Scott Brown), a famous producer who discovered Beaver, is the representative.
Samsung Securities raised the target price of Big Hit by 20.8% from KRW 265,000 to KRW 320,000. Yuanta Securities raised 34.6% from 260,000 won to 350,000 won.
Minha Choi, a researcher at Samsung Securities, said, “Big Hit issued a paid-in capital increase to employees and artists of Ithaca Holdings, and Brown (1.2%), Grande (0.1%), and Beaver (0.1%) became the shareholders of Big Hit. “Brown is expected to be listed as an inside director, so this merger and acquisition (M&A) is not only a one-off, but we expect the two companies to carry out strong cooperation.”
There is also an opinion that Big Hit will emerge as a platform leader through this M&A. This is because there is a possibility that Beaver and Grande will participate in the online performance platform’Weverse’ operated by Big Hit. On Weverse, you can watch videos of famous singers such as BTS, and fans create and share content such as small texts and drawings by forming a community.
Park Jung-yeop, a researcher at Mirae Asset Securities, said, “We define Big Hit as the dominant operator of the fan platform that directly or indirectly possesses top global artists. The emergence of an artist-fan specialized platform is inevitable. I blocked the will to pursue,” he said.
Lee Ki-hoon, a researcher at Hana Financial Investment, said, “Beaver, third place, BTS, and fourth place Grande will become one of the agencies, and Black Pink, the second place, will be launched,” said “Weverse has a total of 200 million YouTube subscribers. It will become the world’s best online fan community platform where 10,000 artists cooperate.”
Reporter Taehoon Lee [email protected]
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