The developer behind the highly popular action-adventure game Stellar Blade, Shift Up, has gone public and was able to raise $320 million in initial public offering as the company's shares surge in price.
The South Korean studio completed an initial public offering and has become the largest gaming IPO in South Korea in more than two years. The latest development also marks the first of at least $50 million since 2021, which was when PUBG developer Krafton raised $3.8 billion.
Shift Up's IPO Raises $320 Million
(Photo : Shift Up / Screenshot taken from official website)
Other than Stellar Blade, Shift Up is also known for its work on mobile games Goddess of Victory: Nikke and Destiny Child. The studio was first formed in 2013 and recently said that it has plans to use the proceeds from the IPO to expand its games portfolio, which is welcome news to fans.
On the first day of trading, Shift Up's share price surged by 49% and reached as high as $64.87 per share. There were nearly 7.3 million shares that were sold at $43.49 each and there were reports that noted demand for shares was 226 times higher than availability, according to GamesIndustry.
The founder and CEO of Shift Up, Hyung-Tae Kim, will also remain as the company's largest shareholder and Tencent Holdings will be its second largest. The developer's success in the IPO is primarily due to the popularity of its Stellar Blade game.
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The title sold more than 1 million copies and is already expected to spawn a sequel as well as a version for PC users. Shift Up launched Stellar Blade on Apr. 26, 2024, and it seemed to have taken inspiration from Alita: Battle Angel, '80s and '90s science fiction, and a taxi driver strike.
The game has already received several post-launch updates since it was released with one adding a boss challenge mode, new outfits, and many more. However, some of the complaints that players have about Stellar Blade are dull characters, a lackluster story, and some frustrating elements of its RPG mechanics, said IGN.
Surging Share Prices
Shift Up's IPO becomes the second-largest in South Korea for this year and only falls behind KKR-backed HD Hyundai Marine Solutions which raised $540 million. Other than Tencent Holdings, other investors that are backing the Stellar Blade maker include online game mogul Park Kwan-ho's Wemade and Kakao Ventures among others.
Tencent Holdings' 35% stake in Shift UP is through Acevill, which is a Singapore-based subsidiary of its cloud arm. The company is also the distributor of the mobile game Goddess of Victory: Nikke.
Prior to leading Shift Up, Kim was a video game artist at NCSoft, where he was responsible for overseeing the design of the studio's flagship online game Blade & Soul. The Stellar Blade developer reported that its revenue rose by 155% year-over-year to $122 million in the calendar year 2023.
On the other hand, the company reported that net income was $78 million, which was an increase of $5 million compared to the previous year. Nearly 97% of this revenue came from Goddess of Victory: Nikke, according to Forbes.
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