WEBTOON Entertainment, the company has been changing the way the world reads comics while building a pipeline for turning popular IP into streaming media, films, animation, games and graphic novels, had its long-anticipated IPO today. The company, listed on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol WBTN, went live with an initial price of $21 per share. WBTN ended its first day of trading up 2 points to 23 , near its high for the day, on a volume of 6.23 million shares.
Biden Vs. Trump 2024 Election Polls: Trump Leads By 6 Points—And Most Voters Think He’ll Win Debate, New Survey FindsDuring the pandemic, we saw an upsurge in all kinds of content consumption including webtoons, but now there has been a retrenchment. How has this impacted your revenues?There are two important metrics in our business: number of users and engagement.
Japan is a huge and important market for comics, manga and webtoons. How is your business there and what are your opportunities to expand?The Japanese market is important two ways: for creators and for consumers. For creators, our platform is very attractive. It is the number one digital app in Japan in terms of gross revenue, and we are also the number one platform worldwide.
WEBTOON’s parent company, South Korean tech and entertainment conglomerate Naver Corporation, is also purchasing a separate issue of 2,380,952 shares at $21 . Naver will retain more than 60% of the company shares after the IPO.filed with the US SEC, WEBTOON Entertainment reported a net loss of $144.8 million for 2023, an increase over the net loss of $132.5 million in 2023. Despite the net loss, the company’s total revenue grew by 18.8% to $1.28 billion in 2023. Adjusted EBITDA was $11.