SoftBank plans to stake in line the latter valued at $14.9 billion trillion

Soft silver plans to stake in line the latter is valued at 14.9 billion U.S. dollars Sina technology news Beijing Time February 25 morning, Bloomberg quoted sources said SoftBank is seeking to buy mobile messaging services line shares. Line is Korea's internet giant Naver's company. Two people familiar with the matter said line had received at least one more takeover plan, trying to buy the company in part or in total. So line can slow the pace of IPOs (IPO). Line currently has about 340 million users. BNP Paribas reckons the company is worth 14.9 billion dollars. The development of mobile messaging service has impacted the telecom operators ' business. This month, Facebook announced a 19 billion dollar takeover of WhatsApp. The previous few days, Lotte announced a 900 million dollar acquisition of another message application Viber. SoftBank founder Son is currently negotiating a deal with line, a source said. SoftBank, the third-ranked mobile operator in Japan and a controlling party to the US operator Sprint, has acquired stakes in a number of content providers, including Chinese pea pods and Finnish game developer Supercell Oy. Another source said line is still planning to make an IPO later this year, but the company hopes to take some time to assess the current takeover plan. Selling some of the shares to large companies will increase line valuations in future stock sales. Spokesmen for SoftBank, line and Naver declined or have not yet commented on the news. In a report on February 20, Samsung Securities quoted market research company App Annie as saying that line is currently the number one mobile messaging service in Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, ahead of Facebook Messenger. In addition, line in Chile and Mexico also has a higher ranking, the local competitors are mainly Microsoft's Skype. And line also in Korea and KakaoTalk fierce competition. Last year, line gained about 34.3 billion yen (about 335 million US dollars) in revenue from the core business of game and expression sales. Justin Lee, an analyst at BNP Paribas, said last week that the number of registered users in line would reach 525 million by the end of 2014, through developments in India and Latin America. In the next year, line valuations are likely to reach 16 trillion won (about 14.9 billion dollars). He rated the Naver stock as a buy. (Chu Yue)