Naver found’Southeast Asia Coupang and Baemin’… 100 billion more shots at overseas startups

Naver is speeding up investment in overseas startups again. It plans to secure a maximum of 700 billion won by issuing corporate bonds and then spend at least 100 billion won here.

He is planning to put his hands on the growing cotyledons that will become a’mobile game changer’ like the people of Coupang and Baedal. Naver has invested in startups called’Baemin of India’,’Coupang of Indonesia’, and’Carrots of Southeast Asia’ for the past 2-3 years.

On the 17th, Naver conducts a demand forecast for issuing corporate bonds. According to the stock report submitted by Naver to the Financial Services Commission the day before, the issuance amount is 400 billion won, which can be increased to 700 billion won. For Naver, it is the issuance of corporate bonds in 6 years, the largest in scale. In 2010 and 2013, it issued 100 billion won, respectively, and 150 billion won in 2015.

Naver announced in a report that if it secures 400 billion won, it will spend 300 billion won for the data center built in Sejong City and 100 billion won for purchasing shares in promising global startups. If the size of corporate bond issuance increases after forecasting demand, this amount will also increase.

Over the past 3-4 years, Naver’s overseas investment has been breathless. Although it directly acquired Daereo, such as the web novel platform Watpad, it also sprinkled seeds evenly in cooperation with leading venture capitalists at home and abroad. A representative example is the’K-Fund’ (invested in 2017) that the founder, Hae-jin Lee, Global Investment Officer (GIO), made a direct venture to invest in European startups. In order to invest in Asia, in 2018, we formed the’Naver-Mirae Asset Asia Growth Fund’ in cooperation with Mirae Asset in 2018, and invested in foreign investors such as Sequoia Capital, Softbank Ventures, DST Global and start-ups in China, North America and Europe. . Of the funds secured this time, it is planning to put 100 billion won more here.

Naver has spread seeds evenly among game changers in the fast-growing Southeast Asian mobile market. These include Bukalapak, an e-commerce company in Indonesia’s Coupang and Market Curry, Happy Fresh, a grocery delivery company, Shadowpax, which is called “Baemin of India,” and a carousel of “Singapore’s Carrots” that sells to cars and real estate. All of them are unicorn companies with an enterprise value of over 1 trillion won, or are spare unicorns. Their growth will come back to Naver’s global influence and profit expansion. Like Coupang’s listing in the US, Softbank, an investor, will gain 6-7 times the profit.

On the other hand, Naver wrote’more regulations on online portals’ along with deteriorating profitability due to excessive competition in the simple payment/e-commerce market as one of the risk factors for corporate bonds and related investors to consider in the securities report submitted this time. The overall stance of strengthening regulations has been maintained. “A variety of sanctions from government and quasi-governmental organizations may negatively affect business performance.”

‘Changes to Google and Apple’s app market policy’ were mentioned as a new risk factor. “If the relationship with Google and Apple deteriorates or if the billing policy changes against Naver, profitability will deteriorate,” he said, citing Google’s mandatory in-app payment and 30% commission policy. He also mentioned that the’Google Prevention Act’ to prevent this was proposed in the National Assembly, and that the range of profitability fluctuations was large depending on the result.

Reporter Shim Seo-hyun [email protected]