Beauty Companies Leading IPOs with High Added Value

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Hye-seon] Declarations of initial public offerings (IPOs) by beauty care companies are continuing.

As consumer interest in beauty care grows, there is an expectation that the beauty care market will continue to expand even in the 'With Corona' phase, leading to IPOs. Recently, the 'zoom boom' phenomenon, where people want to make their faces look more beautiful on screen, has emerged, and there are forecasts that the related industry will grow at an average annual rate of 10% until 2028.

Beauty medical information platform Babitok announced on the 22nd that it plans to be the first domestic beauty medical app to go public. Babitok completed a physical division from its parent company CareLabs in May to re-evaluate its business value, strengthen existing businesses, and develop new businesses, marking a new start as a 100% subsidiary independent corporation.

Babitok, planning an IPO in 2024, recorded sales of 10 billion KRW and operating profit of 3.9 billion KRW in the first half of this year. Its app market share in the same industry accounts for more than half, at 56.2% (based on total usage time), and the number of members reached 4.16 million as of the end of June.

In the second half of the year, Babitok plans to focus its capabilities on increasing user trust along with quantitative growth. First, it will complete the application of functions such as 'advanced automatic blocking program for suspicious negative reviews' and 'personalized information recommendation' so that users can more easily and conveniently check high-quality, balanced information on Babitok.

Wyatt, which operates the beauty and hair reservation platform 'Kakao Hairshop,' aims to be listed on KOSDAQ within 2024.

Wyatt was created when Hasys, a Kakao-affiliated hairshop platform company, merged with Humeijer, a hair care company known for the Dr. For Hair brand, in December last year. It is reported that Humeijer's CEO Kwon Gyu-seok rejected acquisition offers from multiple private equity funds and multinational companies and merged with the Kakao affiliate for the growth of employees and the company.

Wyatt, which completed Series C investment of 48.6 billion KRW in August and was valued at 350 billion KRW, plans to invest the funds raised this time in popularizing the Kakao Hairshop beauty platform, expanding Dr. For Hair's overseas business, and launching new daily necessities brands.

The main service of Kakao Hairshop is hair salon reservations, allowing users to select their desired salon and time through the app and complete reservation and payment at once. Last year, the transaction amount was about 100 billion KRW, capturing a 70% market share.

BioPlus, which is scheduled to be listed at the end of this month, is a specialized company in medical devices and bio products based on polymer biomaterials. Its core competitiveness lies in the independently developed platform patented technology MDM Tech, which maximizes the functions and quality of biomaterial application products such as viscoelasticity, safety, durability, molding ability, biocompatibility, and biodegradability.

BioPlus mainly produces fillers and adhesion prevention agents based on hyaluronic acid (HA), with its flagship product being the cosmetic surgery product 'Dermal Filler.' BioPlus plans to continue its growth by discovering bio businesses such as botulinum toxin in addition to its main cosmetic surgery sector.

Last year, it recorded sales of 24.3 billion KRW and operating profit of 12.3 billion KRW, which increased by 43.2% and 79.0% respectively compared to the previous year.

The final public offering price was set at 31,500 KRW. During the two-day demand forecast on the 8th and 9th, a total of 1,374 domestic and foreign institutions participated, recording a competition rate of 1,220.15 to 1. Among the participating institutions, 99.7% offered prices above the upper limit of the public offering price band. The general investor subscription will be held on the 13th and 14th, with a total of 1.4 million shares offered.

Witch Factory, which advocates natural functional cosmetics, was established in 2012. Its largest shareholder is L&P Cosmetic, famous for the 'mask pack myth,' which acquired 70% of Witch Factory's shares at the end of 2018. Last year, sales surged 42% to 39.3 billion KRW from 27.6 billion KRW the previous year, and operating profit increased by more than 240% to 6.5 billion KRW.

Although cosmetics companies were hit by COVID-19 in recent years, Witch Factory's sales greatly increased by promoting cleansing foam and cleansing oil. It has gained high popularity among the MZ generation as a cost-effective product in H&B store channels such as CJ Olive Young.

Witch Factory, aiming for listing next year, recently changed its lead underwriters to Shinhan Investment Corp. and Yuanta Securities. Initially, NH Investment & Securities was selected as the lead underwriter but has now stepped down to the underwriting group.

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