SK Biopharm, 1.7 Million Shares Held by Institutions to Be Released on the 5th

[Asia Economy Reporter Minji Lee] A total of 1.7 million shares of SK Biopharm, which has been listed for three months, are scheduled to be released into the stock market on the 5th. The market is paying close attention to how the stock price will be affected if a large volume of shares, released from the institutions' 'lock-up' period, floods the market.

According to the Korea Exchange on the 3rd, 1,705,534 shares of SK Biopharm held by institutional investors will be released into the market starting from the 5th, after fulfilling the three-month lock-up period. This is a portion of the total 13.2 million shares allocated to institutional investors during SK Biopharm's public offering.

On the 2nd, at the Korea Exchange in Yeouido, Seoul, attendees including Cho Jung-woo, CEO of SK Biopharm (center), are performing the opening price confirmation ceremony to commemorate SK Biopharm's KOSPI listing. Photo by Moon Ho-nam munonam@

At that time, about half of the 13.2 million shares, 6.31 million shares, were released into the market immediately upon listing, but the remaining 6.9 million shares were subject to a lock-up period ranging from as short as 15 days to as long as six months from the listing date. This was because institutional investors were required to hold the allotted public offering shares for a certain period after listing as a condition for receiving a large allocation of shares.

Accordingly, 13,700 shares were released 15 days after listing, and 262,500 shares were unlocked after one month. The shares being released this time are those with a three-month lock-up period, accounting for about 16.2% of the approximately 1.5 million SK Biopharm shares currently in circulation.

Kyungbeom Ko, a researcher at Yuanta Securities, explained, "In the case of SK Biopharm, 12.9% of the institutional allocation is subject to a three-month lock-up, and 37.3% to a six-month lock-up, meaning that 50.2% of the institutional public offering shares are under lock-up agreements of three months or longer."

SK Biopharm's trading volume exceeded 10 million shares on the fourth day after listing, the 5th of last month, but has recently declined significantly. On the 10th of last month, the volume was 1.26 million shares, but it dropped to 160,000 shares on the 29th and 190,000 shares on the 28th.

As trading volume decreased, the stock price also fell sharply. The price, which was above 200,000 KRW in the early days of listing, dropped to 156,500 KRW. Compared to the intraday high of 269,500 KRW, this is a decline of 41.9%. The market capitalization stands at 12.2 trillion KRW, ranking 26th.

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