4Q IPO Calendar Filling Up Again... AI and Robotics Companies on the Rise [Click e-Market]

22 IPO Candidates Target Year-End Debuts

Subscription Rush for AI Companies Continues

Consider Both Offering Price and Financial Performance

The calendar for IPO investors is about to get busy again. After a period of sluggish activity, a wave of initial public offerings (IPOs) is clustering ahead of the end of the year. Words like artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are cropping up frequently. As companies riding these popular themes prepare for their debut on the stock market, the IPO market is beginning to heat up.

According to KB Securities on October 1, 22 companies are either about to begin the public offering process or have passed the preliminary listing review and are planning to go public by the end of the year. Large 'unicorn'-level companies are submitting IPO filing documents, making their schedules more concrete. Last week, RyuTen Technologies officially began the IPO process by selecting a lead underwriter. KB Securities researcher Tae Yoon Seon predicted, "After stagnating in the first half of the year, the IPO market is expected to gradually recover in the fourth quarter, its peak season."

Companies that have already gone public are setting a positive tone. As of the close on September 30, Global Technology, a system semiconductor company, and Bigwave Robotics, a robotic automation platform provider, which both debuted on the KOSDAQ on September 29, saw their stock prices rise by 85.1% and 115.8%, respectively, compared to their offering prices. Neosapience, which operates the AI voice and video generation platform 'Typecast,' also traded 71.1% above its IPO price.

Offerings from related companies are scheduled to continue into October. Elise Group has its subscription period on October 7-8, IntelliVIX on October 21-22, and RebelUp on October 22-23. Elise Group focuses on AI cloud services, IntelliVIX on AI-powered safety monitoring, and RebelUp on AI infrastructure software as their main businesses. Generative AI company Xenon has also recently passed the preliminary listing review.

The offering drawing the most attention is Elise Group. The indicative offering price range is 74,000 to 90,500 won, and if priced at the top end, its market capitalization post-listing would be about 1 trillion won. Elise Group provides AI education and cloud services to public institutions and businesses, and has recently expanded into high-performance graphics processing unit (GPU)-powered cloud and data center operations.

Company performance is also changing. Last year, Elise Group posted 39.5 billion won in revenue and 5.2 billion won in operating profit. In the first half of this year alone, revenue reached 34.4 billion won and operating profit was 10.3 billion won. This means half-year revenue is already approaching last year’s total, and operating profit has already doubled. Operating margin jumped from 13.1% last year to about 30% in the first half of this year. AI cloud now accounts for 75.9% of overall sales.

Until now, profits were held back because investments for infrastructure were made upfront, and depreciation of capital expenditures had to be reflected over time. This year, the company’s expanded cloud business is driving improved results. Elise Group plans to use the funds raised through the public offering to invest in AI infrastructure, including building additional data centers in the Seoul metropolitan and Honam regions. A key point to watch is whether the improved profitability continues after these new investments.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.