South Korean Elice Group Slumps 32 Percent on Market Debut
South Korean artificial intelligence and cloud provider Elice Group suffered a 32% drop on its first day of trading in an initial public offering, marking the worst debut among offerings exceeding $100 million.
South Korean AI cloud and software provider Elice Group plummeted 32% on its stock market debut on Tuesday, reigniting investor concerns over the profitability and sustainability of artificial intelligence infrastructure investments.
Elice Group raised 201.1 billion won (approximately $150 million) in its initial public offering. However, its shares fell below the IPO price of 90,500 won to close at 60,500 won, bringing the company's market value down to about 674 billion won ($508 million). This performance was recorded as the worst-ever IPO exit for a company raising over $100 million in South Korea.
This sharp decline also triggered weakness in AI-linked stocks on Wall Street, with shares of neocloud firms like CoreWeave and Nebius Group losing more than 5%. Furthermore, negatively impacting the broader South Korean market, the benchmark KOSPI index dropped 3.73% to reach its lowest closing level since April 7. Meanwhile, several other artificial intelligence companies, such as Australia's Firmus, Blackstone-backed AirTrunk, and SoftBank-backed SB Energy, had recently reduced or suspended their deals.
Sources
- reuters.com · Link