"Preparing for Quantum Jump"... Abko to Enter KOSDAQ Next Month

Sales Continue Growth Trend... Recording an Annual Average Growth Rate of 33.5%

Oh Kwang-geun, CEO of ABKO, is explaining about the company at an initial public offering (IPO) briefing held in Yeouido, Yeongdeungpo, Seoul on the afternoon of the 18th.

[Asia Economy Reporter Geum Bo-ryeong] "We are preparing for a quantum jump."

Gaming gear specialist company 'ABKO' held an initial public offering (IPO) briefing session on the 18th at Yeouido, Yeongdeungpo, Seoul. CEO Oh Kwang-geun emphasized at the briefing, "We will definitely achieve sustainable growth."

Founded in 2001, ABKO is a company that sells gaming gear such as keyboards, mice, and headsets, as well as small home appliances and audio devices. In the gaming gear sector, it holds the number one market share in South Korea.

Sales have continued to grow. Revenue was 47.3 billion KRW in 2017, 66.3 billion KRW in 2018, and 84.3 billion KRW last year. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) reached 33.5%. Last year, operating profit was 5.6 billion KRW, with an operating profit margin of 6.6%. The first half of this year recorded the highest performance ever, with sales of 74 billion KRW and operating profit of 12.8 billion KRW.

Recently, due to the increasing hardware requirements of PC games and the non-face-to-face (untact) trend caused by COVID-19, demand for gaming gear has surged. CEO Oh explained, "Gamers started installing gaming gear at home because they couldn't go to PC bangs due to COVID-19," adding, "While PC bangs used to be the main market, sales volume has increased as the market has expanded to households."

ABKO has started to achieve significant results on the Amazon platform. The mouse, which began selling on Amazon US last year, ranked 1st and 7th in the PC mouse category as of last month. Product sales on Amazon UK and India are imminent, and entry into Tmall, one of China's largest online shopping malls, has also been confirmed.

In addition to gaming gear, ABKO has diversified its sales through small home appliances and audio device businesses. Sales in the first half of this year were 6.8 billion KRW for small home appliances and 7.5 billion KRW for audio devices. The small home appliance sector is defined as the so-called 'New Life Appliances.' CEO Oh said, "The global New Life Appliance market is growing. Xiaomi was initially overlooked but has now grown tremendously. We see this as an opportunity market," adding, "The wireless bathroom cleaner market previously had little presence, but ABKO's wireless bathroom cleaner 'Neospin' from 'Oella' now sells 20,000 units per month. This is the result of pioneering the market."

The 'PadBank,' a smart device charging locker system, has differentiated competitiveness through a patent for automatic data synchronization software. ABKO expects the smart device charging locker market to reach approximately 300 billion to 500 billion KRW by 2025. PadBank has experience winning pilot projects from phases 1 to 5.

ABKO completed demand forecasting by today and will conduct subscription on the 23rd and 24th. The total number of public offering shares is 2,507,000, and the total number of shares to be listed is 9,694,308. The lead underwriter is Mirae Asset Daewoo. The scheduled listing date is the 2nd of next month.

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