Nexon has gone public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and has managed to raise $1.17 billion from its IPO. Nexon's IPO is the biggest of the year for the exchange, putting the company's total market value of between $7.69 billion and $8.97 billion. In an interview with Bloomberg, Nexon CFO Owen Mahoney said that the social gaming and online gaming company plans on using the money to fund new acquisitions.
"We want to have currency and cash on hand to be able to move aggressively if and when opportunities come up," he said. "We like to buy teams and properties early in their life."
Big IPO aside, the company has already seen a dramatic decline its stock price on the first day of trading - down 3.9 percent.
Nexon was a pioneer in the early days of the free-to-play space with games like Maple Story. The company has built a large audience for that game in China, which reportedly represents a third of its total revenue and the company is banking on significant growth in the region over the next few years.
"Some people debate whether China's got a lot of growth in it," Mahoney said. "We think China is very early days."
Nexon claimed in its IPO filing that it had a total 1.2 billion registered players, with 77 million of those active as of September 2011. It also claimed that eight of its games have generated lifetime revenues of $100 million or more; three of those games have earned more than $300 million; and one which has earned $400 million.
"We can really bring a lot to the table," Mahoney added. "We know how to tune a game so that people will play it for months on end."
Source: GI.biz
