Line Messenger Becomes Year’s Biggest IPO

The Asians’ favorite Line Messenger has been acclaimed as year’s biggest tech IPO. Originated by NHN Japan-one of the best messaging companies in Japan, this messaging service has a wide usage in a larger part of Asia.

With over 200 million active users per month, it is soon going to reach one billion boasted from another popular messaging service WhatsApp as well as Facebook: one of the most widely used social media platforms in the world. Its games and in-app stickers are also among the best selling smartphone’s garnishings among the users.

The Japanese company went public on Thursday and began with shares priced $42 in the stock exchange, New York City. The symbol it was using appeared as LN and the shares were up 33% over that Line first offered cost of 32.84 US Dollar. The market situation went into company’s favor putting its value at about $7 billion. Moreover, because of what stock offered them, eventually raised the Line over $1 billion.

The area of tech investing is under an atmosphere of extreme concern because of public market which is demanding something better than their expectations. Due to uncertainty about how Line’s IPO would work spanned many investors for quite long. However, the Brexit vote setback it at the eleventh hour.  

According to Serkan Toto, interested people might try to do good from the opportunity that they have long been anticipating. Toto is a Japanese consultant in game industry. He cleared the situation saying Line knows the IPO’s timing as it is specific to it, but it cannot indicate an overall trend.

In the race of messaging applications for smartphone, many companies are already giving people an opportunity to interact with others in form of text messaging, audio and video messaging. These are also fully loaded with different stickers demonstrating a series of emotions used in a conversation. However, Line has left lots of messaging apps behind in figure of users.  It has been ranked the best and most frequently used app for combined conversation with an extremely authentic business opportunity. One of the best things about the messenger is that the way it lets users get their brands on messaging does not alienate them.

Line has sold plentiful stickers to its users so far. The number of sales from its games and stickers tells another success story. Taylor Swift and Hello Kitty stickers are Line’s best selling stickers which are sold for $1 per set. The company also has local services to offer such as transferring money through messaging.

The Representative from the creators of Line Messenger claimed that the app made over $1.1 billon in 2015 which is a 40% increased income from $820 million it earned in 2014.

He said despite the app is getting popularity day by day, it faces challenges and he himself is bearish on the app in the long run.

According the Japanese consultant, he thinks WhatsApp can easily scale around the world whereas Line is specific to Asian taste. Since it is also leveraging local services, it is very difficult to translate its design and content to other regions.