[IPO] Bflysoft “B2C Platform ‘Roseus’ Expected to Boost Performance”

Im Kyunghwan, CEO of Bflysoft.

[Asia Economy Reporter Jang Hyowon] “Growth in performance is expected due to the expansion of the consumer platform ‘Roseus.’”

On the 2nd, Lim Kyunghwan, CEO of Bflysoft, made this statement during an online investor briefing session for the company’s transfer listing to KOSDAQ.

Bflysoft is a media big data service platform company listed on KONEX. It has established a news platform-based service system that integrates legacy media and new media through technology that digitizes analog documents such as print newspapers.

The main businesses include the news electronic scrap platform ‘iSurfer’ and the media and big data analysis platform ‘Wegomon.’ Both platforms operate on a paid subscription model targeting over 1,500 public institutions and major domestic corporations. Recently, they launched a B2C service called ‘Roseus.’

Bflysoft’s core strength lies in its ‘WegoAI’ technology. WegoAI preprocesses news, builds labeled data, and is a technology refined through extensive learning. It can calculate media indices and perform sentiment analysis on issues. This technology is not only applicable to news but also facilitates the digitization of all print materials.

CEO Lim said, “There is a growing movement in the political sphere to move away from portal-centric news platforms. Globally, the trend is to consume news on specialized platforms rather than portals, so our business has great growth potential.”

Last year, Bflysoft recorded consolidated sales of 17 billion KRW and an operating loss of 900 million KRW. The company has posted losses for four consecutive years since 2018.

Regarding this, CEO Lim emphasized, “85% of Bflysoft’s revenue comes from iSurfer, which generates an operating profit of 2 billion KRW annually. The overall losses are due to investments in Wegomon and Roseus, but a turnaround is expected starting this year.” Bflysoft estimates this year’s sales to grow 40% year-over-year to 23.9 billion KRW.

The business expected to drive Bflysoft’s performance is ‘Roseus.’ Roseus is a service that combines big data and AI analysis technology to provide personalized news information to the general public. It allows individuals to access desired news and various media analysis information, and users can create and share content themselves. As of the end of March, six months after its launch, the number of unique visitors surpassed 3.8 million.

CEO Lim explained, “In addition to unique visitors, monthly active users, dwell time, and revisit rates are rapidly increasing, so revenue generation is expected once advertising is introduced. Furthermore, additional revenue will be generated if linked with paid content and commerce in the future.”

Additionally, Bflysoft has completed development of iRoot, which supports multilingual processing including English, Chinese characters, and Japanese. They plan to expand their business from developing service platforms utilizing this technology to developing a global version of Roseus.

CEO Lim also addressed recent litigation issues. In March, some news media filed damage claims against Bflysoft for copyright infringement. Last month, 14 news media outlets filed lawsuits with the same claims.

He stated, “As an official distributor of news copyrights, our legal firm and partner media companies consider these issues to be unfounded. Nevertheless, if we lose and the company faces financial burdens, I, as CEO, have submitted a letter of commitment to the exchange taking full responsibility.”

Meanwhile, Bflysoft’s total public offering shares amount to 1 million shares, with a desired offering price per share of 16,500 to 19,000 KRW, totaling 16.5 to 19 billion KRW. Institutional demand forecasting will be conducted until the 3rd to finalize the offering price, followed by subscription for general investors on the 9th and 10th. The lead underwriter is IBK Investment & Securities.

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