South Korean data centre firm Elice shares plunge in IPO debut
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Shares of the Seoul-based neocloud service provider fell as much as 32% to 61,400 won in early trading on Oct 20.
PHOTO: EPA
- Elice shares fell as much as 32% on their Kosdaq debut after South Korea’s biggest IPO of 2026 raised 201 billion won (S$192.92 million) and valued the firm above one trillion won.
- The weak start tests demand for AI infrastructure stocks, as global peers face lower valuations, cancelled listings and investor doubts about high spending on AI.
- Elice won strong retail support and reported sharp revenue and profit growth. It plans to use IPO funds to build more AI data centres in South Korea and overseas.
AI generated
Data centre infrastructure company Elice plunged in its trading debut on South Korea’s tech-heavy Kosdaq market after raising 201 billion won (S$192.92 million) in the stock exchange’s biggest initial public offering in 2026.
Shares of the Seoul-based neocloud service provider fell as much as 32% to 61,400 won in early trading on Oct 20. The company priced its shares at 90,500 won apiece in the IPO, the top of a marketed price range, for a post-listing market capitalisation exceeding one trillion won.
The debut is a test of investor appetite for the sector after a series of setbacks around the world.
Firmus Grid cancelled its high-profile Sydney listing in October as concerns over borrowing costs, fierce competition and long-term returns from massive AI-related spending weigh on valuations.
Coreweave’s shares have more than halved since their May peak, AirTrunk is delaying a planned IPO of a real estate investment trust, people familiar with the matter have said.
Meanwhile, Nscale is facing pushback over its target IPO valuation, Bloomberg News reported.
“Elice’s debut comes at a time when sentiment toward AI infrastructure companies has weakened, particularly in the US,” said Albert Yong, managing partner and chief investment officer at Petra Capital Management. “Sentiment toward AI infrastructure has been highly volatile and often disconnected from underlying fundamentals.”
Elice was able to generate demand among South Korean retail investors, who poured roughly 10.3 trillion won into subscription deposits in hopes of buying shares. The retail offering was oversubscribed more than 400 times.
To win over investors, Elice touted a 200% surge in first-half revenue to 34.4 billion won, according to its prospectus. The company swung to an operating profit of 10.3 billion won, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation jumped more than 11-fold to 23.2 billion won.
The company is expected to record an 83% sales jump in 2026 and an operating margin of about 33%, analyst Douglas Kim wrote in a note on Smartkarma.
“While it’s a company that already posts operating profit with the AI cloud business and it plans to respond to private-sector demand with the IPO proceeds, it remains to be seen whether the company can maintain its current profitability,” said Kim Do-joon, chief executive of Zian Investment Management.
“Investor sentiment may have weakened due to CoreWeave, but its financial structure is quite different from CoreWeave, so I don’t think investors need to view the company as particularly risky.”
Founded in 2015 by three students in the doctorate programme of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, one of the country’s top technology universities, Elice began as a coding education platform before pivoting to AI cloud infrastructure, supplying products including servers, liquid-cooled chips, cloud and networking equipment and software.
The company has since developed a modular data centre platform with high-density power systems and advanced liquid cooling designed for high-performance AI chip clusters.
A successful offering would help break an IPO drought in South Korea, where the primary market has been in the doldrums as fund-raising surged across Asia.
First-time listings in Seoul have raised US$1.4 billion (S$1.79 billion) in 2026, compared with more than $3 billion in each of the previous three years, according to Bloomberg-compiled data.
Meanwhile, SK Hynix completed the biggest-ever US share sale by a foreign company.
Backed by venture capital firms including Vertex Ventures and Altos Ventures, Elice plans to use its IPO proceeds to build more AI data centres around South Korea and abroad, according to chief executive Jae-won Kim. Mirae Asset Securities and Samsung Securities served as lead underwriters.
“We’re going all-in on becoming a full-stack AI infrastructure leader globally,” Kim said in an interview. “This IPO is about giving ourselves the financial firepower to execute.” BLOOMBERG