(Reuters) – Webtoon Entertainment has priced its initial public offering (IPO) at the high end of that range, aiming to raise about $315 million, the online comics platform said on Wednesday.
The company, majority owned by South Korean tech giant Naver, priced its 15 million shares at $21 apiece and traded them in a range of $18 to $21.
The IPO now values the Los Angeles, California-based company at $2.67 billion.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Securities and Evercore Group are the lead underwriters for the IPO.
Webtoon was founded in 2005 as a side project of CEO Junku Kim while he was working as a search engineer at Naver.
The company, whose roots are in Korea, is a storytelling platform that features thousands of games across genres including fantasy, action, romance and horror.
Webtoon has approximately 170 million monthly active users in more than 150 countries.
The company’s offerings include Japanese webcomic and manga app Line Manga, web novel platform Wattpad and Korean webcomic app Naver Webtoon.
Some funds and accounts managed by the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock (NYSE:) have expressed interest in buying up to $50 million worth of shares sold in the offering.
Additionally, Naver’s US subsidiary Naver U.Hub has agreed to buy $50 million worth of Webtoon shares in a parallel private placement.
Webtoon shares are expected to trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on June 27 under the symbol “WBTN.”
(This story has been updated to add a dollar symbol in paragraph 3)