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BigHit IPO: BTS Members Get 68K Shares Each, Jin To Enlist By End of 2021

Each member of BTS—RM, Suga, J-Hope, Jin, Jimin, V and Jungkook—has received 68,385 shares of BigHit.
Jimin, Jungkook, RM, J-Hope, V, Jin, and SUGA of the K-pop boy band BTS at Rockefeller Plaza on February 21, 2020 in New York City.
Dia Dipasupil via Getty Images
Jimin, Jungkook, RM, J-Hope, V, Jin, and SUGA of the K-pop boy band BTS at Rockefeller Plaza on February 21, 2020 in New York City.

Big Hit Entertainment, the management label of K-Pop group BTS, announced on Wednesday it will debut on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) in October and plans to raise up to 962.6 billion won ($811 million) in its planned initial public offering (IPO).

Each member of BTS—RM, Suga, J-Hope, Jin, Jimin, V and Jungkook—has received 68,385 shares of BigHit. Each of these shares will be worth up to $113 during IPO, Bloomberg’s Sam Kim reported.

BigHit founder and CEO Bang Si-hyuk is largest shareholder of the company with 43.44% shares while Netmarble holds about 25%, the regulatory filing said.

Big Hit plans to offer about 7.1 million newly-issued shares at an indicative price range of 105,000-135,000 won per share, according to the filing.

NH Investment & Securities, Korea Investment & Securities, and JP Morgan will serve as lead underwriters with Mirae Asset Daewoo and Kiwoom Securities participating in the IPO as members of the underwriter group, the Jakarta Post reported.

The company said that with BTS members owning part of its stock, they expect the partnership between the two to grow stronger both as artists and creators, the Herald’s Hyunsu Yim reported. Yim also said that, in its filing, BigHit told investors that Jin will enlist in the military by the end of 2021. The company said its looking at options to minimise the risk of his absence from the group by pre-making albums and other content.

In August, BigHit said it had recorded a profit of around $42 million in the first half of 2020 which came from a revenue of $244 million. The company attributed this to record album sales, its online concerts and merchandise sales.

CEO Bang had said album sales by artists under the Big Hit multi-label system accounted for 40% of sales on South Korea’s Gaon album chart with 22 albums in the top 100.

BTS and Seventeen together accounted for 53% of all top 10 album sales. Bang had called Seventeen the company’s “next mega IP”.

BigHit’s IPO is one of the most highly-anticipated offerings in South Korea this year.

The news comes just as BTS’s new song ‘Dynamite’ debuted at number one on the Billboard’s Hot 100, the first Asian act to hit this milestone since Kyu Sakamoto in 1963.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.