Thursday, June 5th, 2014
SEOUL, KOREA - Line, operator of one of Asia's most popular mobile messenger apps, will take its shares public by November this year at the earliest, Bloomberg reported on June 3. But Naver Inc., the parent company of Line, denied that this is a report based on wrong information. Bloomberg said Naver's Line is reviewing a dual U.S. and Japanese listing. The news report estimated the valuation would be in the range of US$10 billion given Facebook paid $19 billion for WhatsApp, a similar service to Line.
Earlier in February, Bloomberg had reported that Softbank, Japan's second largest communications company, offered Line to take over all or part of its shares. To this and the latest report, Naver said these are groundless. A Naver official said, "The IPO for Line is under discussion within the company as one of the many possible options. Nothing has been decided as to the timing and what market to list."
Naver's Line has a total of 440 million subscribers across the world. Japan has the largest number of subscribers at 50 million, followed by Thailand (22 million), Taiwan (17 million), Indonesia (17 million), India (16 million), and Spain (15 million). In Korea, there are estimated 10 million subscribers. Every day an average of 800,000 to 900,000 new members sign up for the service.
Line has a variety of revenue models through games and stickers. Recently it launched "Line Mall,""Line Call," and "Line Music" as a way to diversify its income streams.