Korean neocloud Elice falls as much as 32% on its Kosdaq debut, the latest in a run of troubled AI data center listings
Another Day, Another Data Center Faceplant: Korea's Biggest IPO Of The Year Craters 32% On Debut
Context
Weak demand for data center listings suggests public investors are growing wary of paying up for AI infrastructure.
Elice is a South Korean company that calls itself a neocloud, meaning it rents out AI computing capacity. Zerohedge, a markets commentary site with a strongly skeptical view of the AI buildout, reported the debut and also posted a table of other data center listings that were delayed, cut or withdrawn since September.
Deep dive
On the evening of October 19, US Eastern time, as trading opened in Seoul, zerohedge posted that Korea's biggest IPO of the year had cratered 32% on its debut.
According to zerohedge, citing Bloomberg, data center infrastructure company Elice raised 201 billion won, about $151 million, on the Kosdaq, South Korea's tech focused exchange. It priced at 90,500 won, the top of its marketed range, for a market value of just over 1 trillion won, about $750 million. Shares briefly opened around 78,000 won, still about 14% below the offer price, then fell as much as 32% to 61,400 won.
Zerohedge then posted a table it titled The Casualty List, crediting itself, Bloomberg, The New York Times, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and Light Reading. It lists a delayed SB Energy IPO for SoftBank, a Firmus IPO that was cut and then withdrawn, a deferred Vitro REIT listing in the Philippines, a postponed AirTrunk REIT in Singapore, Nscale's lower valuation talks after Microsoft exited a UK deal, Elice, and DayOne as a possible next listing. The table is zerohedge's compilation, and this deck has not checked each entry.
In a separate post, zerohedge mocked reports that the offering had been heavily oversubscribed. Strong demand for an offering at pricing does not guarantee that shares hold up once trading opens.
What to expect next
Watch how Elice trades in the days after its debut, and whether it recovers to the offer price. The next test named in zerohedge's table is DayOne, which it says could market a US listing of up to $5 billion as soon as October 21. Nscale's planned IPO and its talks with Anthropic over more computing capacity are another signal of how public investors value AI infrastructure companies.