Members of South Korean boy band sensation BTS saw their fortunes soar on Thursday as investors rushed out to buy their record label’s shares on its stock debut.
Big Hit Entertainment — the Seoul-based music firm behind the wildly popular K-pop act — IPOed Thursday at 270,000 Korean won, or roughly $236 a share — double the offering price set last month. And while the stock ended the day off its highs at 258,000 won, or about $225 a share, it still closed up 90 percent from its IPO price of 135,000 won, or $118.
Big Hit is now worth some $7.6 billion, making it more valuable than the South Korea’s three biggest record labels combined. And it’s success is almost entirely due to BTS, which drove more than 87 percent of Big Hits’ revenues in the first half of this year.
This year BTS — an acronym for Bangtan Sonyeondan, which translates to Bulletproof Boy Scouts — has risen to the top of the charts with its hit single “Dynamite.” But it’s been a global sensation for years and in 2017 became the first South Korean group to win a Billboard Music Award. It has since won four more, including this year when it also performed “Dynamite” from a stage in South Korea.
In August BTS’s seven members were each gifted 68,385 shares of their record label in August. Based on Thursday’s closing price, their individual stakes were each worth nearly $15.4 million.
The listing was one of South Korea’s hottest IPOs this year and it reportedly drew a flurry of interest from both institutional and retail investors, including BTS’s die-hard fans.
Founder and co-CEO Bang Si-hyuk said the management firm would continue “to research, challenge, discover innovative business models, and apply them to continue to grow in the global market.”
Big Hit scored a win with the stock listing even after BTS’s leader, who is known as RM, sparked a controversy in China this week by thanking veterans of the Korean War for their sacrifices in defending South Korea against North Korea, which received help from China.
Chinese nationalists and state media took the remark as a dig at China. BTS-related social media posts from major brands such as Hyundai, Samsung and Fila disappeared from Chinese e-commerce platforms amid the flap.
With Post wires
