Coupang Shares Drop After Bumper IPO

E-commerce company Coupang's stock value plummeted for another day on Wednesday just after a bumper listing about the New York Stock Exchange on March 11, but CEO Kim Bom-suk is still Korea's second-richest stockholder.

Coupang's share selling price plunged 8.15 percent on Wednesday to US$43.29 after sliding 6.58 percent in the last session.

The stock surged to a probably unrealistic $69 on your day of its listing, catapulting Coupang's corporate value to more than W100 trillion (US$1=W1,125). Nonetheless it right now stands at around W85 trillion.

Kim owns 174.8 million Coupang shares valued at around W8.5 trillion. That sets him second only to Samsung chief Lee Jae-yong, whose collateral holdings according to market researcher CEO Score amount to W8.93 trillion.

All of the equity Kim keeps in Coupang are School B stocks that carry 29 times more voting rights than ordinary or Class A good shares. If Kim swapped his School B stocks for School A shares, he would end up owning ten percent of Coupang's total excellent shares.

Coupang's share price apparently tanked just because a lock-up prohibiting employees from selling the share ended Thursday. Shares of newly listed businesses are usually at the mercy of a lock-up amount of 180 days, but Coupang built an exception, allowing personnel to sell their 34 million shares just six days after listing if it remained above the registration price of $35.

That means they are now free to offer their shares. Bloomberg reported that Coupang "deliberately excluded a unique amount of shareholders from investing in shares in the IPO, prompting speculation about whether Coupang's offer was artificially low to ensure quick gains for early on investors."