The company will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the symbol “CPNG”.
The offer exceeds the Wall Street IPO of the dating app Bumble, which raised more than $ 2 billion last month. It is also one of the largest listings ever made by an Asian company on a United States exchange, according to Dealogic.
Kim will personally be worth about $ 6 billion when his company goes public, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index.
Coupang is popular for its “rocket delivery” service, which promises customers free shipping within hours or the next day. But the company also faced some criticism in South Korea about working conditions, which the local media linked to the death of two of its couriers.
Coupang said earlier that he was notified by South Korean authorities that the death of Jang Deok-jun, who worked at one of his logistics centers, “was considered to be a work-related illness”.
“We offer our condolences and apologies for Mr. Jang. We offer our deepest condolences to your family and will actively seek to support your family,” the company said in a statement last month. “We are going to put together the reforms we were preparing … and do our best to create an environment where workers can work safely,” he added.
Coupang did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday about the second death.
Like many e-commerce companies, Coupang’s business grew during the coronavirus pandemic, as more people stay at home and shop online. When the crisis started, the company’s next-day delivery orders jumped from just over 2 million to 3.3 million a day.
“We saw an increase in demand across all categories,” Kim told CNN in an interview last April.
Coupang lost about $ 475 million in 2020, an improvement over the previous year’s $ 699 million net loss, according to a SEC filing. But it managed to impress investors.
“Coupang is potentially setting a new benchmark for global e-commerce companies in Asia and the United States and there are a number of important lessons that startups can learn from what Coupang has achieved,” according to Goodwater Capital, a capital company California venture that has already invested in the startup.
Customer loyalty and the company’s dominance in South Korea suggest that “in a way, [it’s] surpassing even Amazon, “wrote the company in a report on Wednesday.
“It has a lot to do with your innovations in the delivery model,” said Eric Kim, managing partner at Goodwater Capital, a former board member at Coupang.
“They have something called dawn delivery. If you order at midnight, you can get it at 7 am,” he told CNN Business.
The interest in the IPO, however, has been great. The company previously said it would sell shares for between $ 27 and $ 30 each, before raising that range to $ 32 to $ 34 – and then, finally, pricing $ 35. It also increased the number of shares it planned to offer, from 120 million to 130 million, including some of existing shareholders.
The excitement comes at a good time for SoftBank, Coupang’s largest shareholder. The Japanese conglomerate has invested at least $ 3 billion in Coupang since 2015, and its Vision Fund holds more than 35% of the company. Its stake is now worth close to $ 20 billion.
Although technology stocks have experienced some volatility in recent weeks, in general was in an incredible race last year. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son took advantage of the boom and asked companies in his portfolio to go public, suggesting that they could help his fund lay “golden eggs”.
– Selina Wang and Jake Kwon of CNN contributed to this report.
