Line suspected IPO valuation is expected to reach 20 billion US dollars

According to foreign media reports, Lee Hae-Jin, the founder of South Korean portal Naver, is preparing to bring its mobile instant messaging application Line to the world stage. Line was developed by Li Haijin at a Japanese subsidiary in an attempt to cope with the disruption of communications that occurred following the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami.

But unlike Naver.com's widely-welcomed South Korean market, Li Haizhen will face a completely different market. Entering the international market is also different from developing a leading local application or blocking the global giants. Li Haizhen will have to compete with its mature rivals in an internationalized context.

Li Haizhen said in an interview recently: "I was an offensive winger who needed to dribble to break through each other's defenses." Offensive wingers play an important role in goal scoring in football games, such as in 2008 C Lo, the world's football player, is an offensive winger.

Line has attracted 470 million users thanks to its minimalist design and elaborate textures. It has more users than KakaoTalk, a Kakao-based app, and is getting closer to Tencent's WeChat and Facebook's WhatsApp.

Some informed bankers said Naver is considering selling its shares in Tokyo or New York or both at the same time in order to raise funds to expand the market and narrow the gap with its competitors. They said that no matter where the initial public offering (IPO), the valuation of Line may be as high as 20 billion US dollars.

Both Line and Naver declined to comment on the listing plan.

Rapid development

Li Haizhen founded Naver.com in 1999, at a time when the rivals were portals for Daum Communications Corp, a local company, and Yahoo, a foreign-owned company.

Naver.com has won users through user forums and search engine features. Its search engine shows results crawled on news sites, blogs and other sites on a single page.

Since then, Naver.com has won a leading position in Korea. According to KoreanClick, Korea's web search company, Naver.com's search engine accounts for 75% of the Korean search market. In contrast, Google's share of the Korean search market is only 2%.

This makes South Korea a handful of countries where Google has not dominated the search market, including China and Russia. It also makes Naver Korea's fifth-most valuable stock market with a market capitalization of 27 trillion won ($ 26.76 billion).

But in just three years, its Line development more rapidly. In the first quarter of this year, Naver's revenue was 638 billion won, of which nearly a quarter from Line, its revenue mainly depends on the sale of advertising, games and emoticons.

About 80% of Line's revenue comes from Japan. Overseas, Thailand and Indonesia are the two largest markets for Line in terms of subscribers. Line has entered Mexico and the United States as part of its global expansion.

Tom Mowat, principal analyst at AnalysysMason Asia Pacific, a market research firm, notes that the global messaging market is still growing and that any messaging application is likely to consolidate its leadership in a country and is likely to take years .

At a conference held in Jeju, South Korea, Li Hai-chen said in rare interviews with the media: "For the global news market, the coming years will be decisive."

He said, "Therefore, we will focus on expanding our user base, rather than profitability." (Liu Chun)