Elice, a South Korean neocloud provider, saw its shares sink 32 percent to Won61,400 on the Kosdaq on Tuesday, far below the IPO price of Won90,500. The weak debut adds to broader investor concern about valuations in the AI sector, amid a continued sell-off of semiconductor stocks in Seoul. The Kospi Composite slid 3 percent, with SK Hynix down 4.6 percent and Samsung Electronics falling 1.6 percent.
The two chipmakers account for about half the index, which has shed a fifth of its value in the past month. Elice raised approximately Won201 billion ($151 million) after pricing shares at the top of its indicative range in the biggest Kosdaq IPO this year. More than Won10 trillion was committed in subscription deposits, with the retail portion subscribed over 400 times.
The decline follows Nvidia-backed Firmus abandoning its $5 billion IPO in Australia less than two weeks ago. Concerns over higher financing costs, intensifying competition and uncertain long-term returns on AI investments have disrupted listing plans worldwide. Peter Lee, a Citi analyst, noted higher interest rates are fuelling concern over the sustainability of AI investments.
In its prospectus, Elice stressed strong financial improvement, with half-year revenue tripling to Won34.4 billion ($25.9 million). Founded in 2015 as a coding education platform by three doctoral students at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, the company shifted focus to AI cloud infrastructure. It intends to use IPO proceeds to expand domestic and global AI data centre operations.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing