The company will trade on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the symbol “CPNG”.
The offer surpasses the dating app Bumble’s Wall Street IPO, which raised more than $ 2 billion last month. According to Dealogic, it is also one of the largest listings ever by an Asian company on a US stock exchange.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Kim will personally be worth about $ 6 billion once his company goes public.
Coupang is popular for its ‘rocket delivery’ service, which delivers customers for free within hours or the next day. But the company has also been criticized in South Korea over working conditions, linking local media to the deaths of two of its delivery workers.
Coupang said earlier that the South Korean authorities had informed him that the death of Jang Deok-jun, who worked at one of his logistics centers, was “a real illness.” ‘
“We express our condolences and apologize to Mr Jang. We express our sincere condolences to his family and we will make every effort to support his family,” the company said in a statement last month. “We will put together the reforms we have prepared … and do our best to create the environment where workers can work safely,” he added.
Coupang on Thursday did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the second death.
Like many e-commerce businesses, Coupang’s business grew during the coronavirus pandemic as more people stayed home and bought online. When the crisis first began, the company’s delivery orders jumped from just over 2 million to 3.3 million a day the next day.
“We’ve seen an increase in demand in all categories,” Kim said in an interview with CNN last April.
Coupang lost about $ 475 million in 2020, an improvement on the net loss of $ 699 million the previous year, according to a SEC filing. But it has managed to impress investors.
“Coupang may be setting a new benchmark for global e-commerce businesses across Asia and the U.S., and there are a number of key lessons new businesses can learn from what Coupang has achieved,” said Goodwater Capital, a California venture capital firm formerly invest in startup.
The company’s loyalty and dominance in South Korea suggests that ‘in some respects [it’s] even Amazon from Amazonas, ”the firm wrote in a report on Wednesday.
“A lot has to do with their innovations on the delivery model,” said Eric Kim, a former Coupang board member.
“They have something called dawn delivery. If you order at midnight, you can get it at 7 p.m.,” he told CNN Business.
Interest in the IPO has meanwhile been hot. Previously, the company said it would sell shares for between $ 27 and $ 30 each before rising to $ 32 to $ 34 – and then eventually costing $ 35. It also increased the number of shares it plans to offer from 120 million to 130 million, including some of existing shareholders.
The diaper is coming at a good time for SoftBank, the largest shareholder in Coupang. The Japanese conglomerate has invested at least $ 3 billion in Coupang since 2015 and its Vision Fund owns more than 35% of the company. Its stake is now worth nearly $ 20 billion.
Although technology stocks have experienced some volatility over the past few weeks, they have usually done so. has been running incredibly well for the past year. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son took up the protest and called on his portfolio companies to go public, suggesting they could help his fund lay ‘golden eggs’.
CNN’s Selina Wang and Jake Kwon contributed to this report.
