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South Korean boy band BTS is not just an international music sensation, their members are now billionaires thanks to an initial public offering that topped the charts of their label, Big Hit Entertainment.
The K-Pop label issued its shares at 135,000 won, or $ 115 a piece, raising 962.55 million won, or $ 822 million, and giving Big Hit a market valuation of 4.8 trillion won, or $ 4.1 billion, according to Bloomberg. That makes the deal South Korea’s largest share offering since July 2017, Dealogic said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch.
Big Hit is run by Bang Si-Hyuk, a veteran music producer who owns about 43% of the company and is now a billionaire. He gave the seven BTS members, all in their early to mid-20s, more than 68,000 shares each, which values their stakes at roughly $ 8 million each. The public offering values Big Hit at $ 4 billion, Bloomberg reported. The shares begin trading on October 15.
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One of the few K-Pop bands to break up In western markets, BTS last year had their third No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart in less than 12 months. The group, whose name means “Beyond the Scene”, plans to release their second album of the year, called “BE”, in November, after releasing their first English song “Dynamite” in August.
The group consists of Kim Tae-hyung, also known as V; Jung Ho-seok or J-Hope; Kim Nam-joon, RM; Kim Seok-jin, Jin; Park Ji-min, Jimin; Jeon Jung-kook, Jungkook; and Min Yoon-gi, or Suga. They have been with Big Hit since the beginning, when it was considered a little-known startup.
Big Hit’s IPO means that retail investors can get in on the action involving a group whose success has been compared to the Beatles. Largely due to the success of BTS, Big Hit reported 587.2 billion won, or about $ 500 million, in revenue and 98.7 billion won, or $ 84 million, in operating profit. Big Hit’s contract with BTS expires at the end of 2024.
Big Hit and BTS in June jointly donated $ 1 million to the ongoing anti-racism movement in the US and beyond, sparked by the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, as a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his knees. neck. BTS fans matched the septet’s donation in 24 hours.
