Kakao Games ups stake in Lionheart Studio to 54.95% ahead of IPO

South Korea’s Kakao Games Corp. has acquired an additional 30.37 percent stake or 225,260 shares in Lionheart Studio Corp. for 1.2 trillion won ($929 million) before going public with the game developer behind its blockbuster mobile game “Odin: Valhalla Rising.”

With the acquisition via its European operation, Kakao Games’ stake holding in Lionheart Studio goes up to 54.95 percent, it said in its disclosure on Thursday.

Lionheart Studio plans to go public on the Kosdaq bourse within the year, while its enterprise value estimated at 4 trillion won, which is bigger than Kakao Games’ market cap of 3.8 trillion won. It delivered an operating profit of 215.3 billion won on sales of 232.5 billion won last year.

Separately, another game publisher Wemade disclosed on the same day that it sold off 22,209 shares in Lionheart Studio for profit-taking for 118.7 billion won.

Kakao Games shares were trading 0.81 percent lower at 48,750 won in Seoul trading at 12:24 p.m. Friday.

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