This Company Just Became the Biggest IPO of 2016 - Fortune

This Company Just Became the Biggest IPO of 2016

Posted: 14 Jul 2016 01:52 PM PDT

Call it a big fish in a small pond: With 2016 on track to record the fewest U.S. IPOs since the Great Recession, Line Corp. is officially the biggest of the bunch. The Japanese messaging app maker began trading Thursday after raising $1.14 billion in its highly anticipated IPO earlier this week, making Line the biggest company to go public on a U.S. stock exchange so far this year.
Line stock, which is listed under the ticker symbol “LN,” surged as much as 36% in its debut—one of the best first-day performances of this year’s IPOs. The stock was up nearly 26% near market close.

There have only been 43 U.S. IPOs, including Line, so far in 2016, 59% fewer than there were at this time last year, according to Renaissance Capital. In total, the 2016 deals have raised only $7.4 billion, down 60% from the same period in 2015. Jitters about the economy and a rocky stock market scared off many companies from going public earlier this year. For the first time in years, not a single tech company held a U.S. IPO in the first quarter of this year. There were no tech IPOs in the first quarter of this year, with many potential candidates waiting to see the outcome of the U.K.’s Brexit vote in June. Now, as U.S. stocks are hitting new record highs, more private companies may decide to brave the public markets.
Line is the third billion-dollar IPO in the U.S. in 2016, according to Dealogic. The others include MGM Growth Properties, a casino real estate company that went public in April, and US Foods Holding, a food service distributor that raised more than $1 billion in May.
Worldwide, Line is the largest IPO of a technology company since First Data FDC 2.30% went public in October in a $2.8 billion deal. But among all industries, there were three IPOs larger than Line’s on foreign stock exchanges to date in 2016, including Dong Energy, a Danish utility that last month raised the equivalent of $2.6 billion in Copenhagen; China Zheshang Bank, which raised $1.7 billion in Hong Kong in March; and Dutch insurer ASR Nederland, which raised $1.2 billion in June.
There are several other major upcoming IPOs in the U.S., but none as big as Line. Tomorrow, AdvancePierre Foods Holding, a ready-made sandwich producer, is expected to begin trading after an IPO that seeks to raise nearly $460 million, potentially cracking the top 10 offerings this year. And next week Patheon, a drug development services company, aims to go public in an IPO that could raise almost $719 million, which would put it among the top five deals.
Shares of Line will also trade on the Tokyo stock exchange starting Friday.
This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

Turkish president to crush opponents & purge military after failed coup - Independent

A striking feature of the failed military coup in Turkey is that President Erdogan and his government did not know that there was an extensive conspiracy within the armed forces aiming to seize power.
It was widely assumed that the era of military coups in Turkey was over and the army has recently had good relations with Mr Erdogan.
It may only have been a faction within the military, but it was able to strike in multiple places in Istanbul, Ankara and elsewhere, even detaining the Turkish chief-of-staff Gen Hulusi Akar for several hours until he was freed by anti-coup troops.

    His headquarters in Ankara were still being reportedly held by pro-coup forces on Saturday morning.
At the height of the coup, tanks closed the bridges over the Bosphorus and members of parliament in Ankara were hiding in the cellars of their assembly building in Ankara as it came under fire.
Pro-coup helicopters were strafing the intelligence headquarters and one was shot down by an F-16. The government was eager to declare that the coup had been smashed, but there are still signs of official nervousness with Turkish airspace around Istanbul being closed, opened and then closed again.
The coup was never likely to succeed once it had lost the advantage of surprise, which it did fairly rapidly as news spread of what had happened.
The plotters failed to eliminate, detain or isolate President Erdogan who was on holiday in Marmaris from which he was able to use a reporter’s phone to communicate with a television studio and call for people to take to the streets in opposition to the coup.
He followed this up by flying to Ataturk Istanbul airport, where he was well placed to show that he was still in command.

What to Know About This Year’s Biggest-Yet Tech IPO - TIME

What to Know About This Year’s Biggest-Yet Tech IPO

Posted: 14 Jul 2016 01:06 PM PDT

Line, the company behind one of Asia’s most popular messaging apps, completed its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday. Trading opened at $42 per share under the ticker LN, making it the largest tech IPO Wall Street has seen so far this year.
While Line has become a major force in the messaging space since its debut in 2011, the name is likely unfamiliar to many outside of Asia. Here’s an overview of Line and some key facts about the company.
Who’s Using It
Line has 218.4 million monthly active users, the company said in its most recent earnings report. Most of those users are based in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia, although the company says it’s also seeing growth in the Middle East. By comparison, Facebook Messenger has more than 900 million monthly active users, while popular Chinese messenger WeChat has more than 700 million and WhatsApp boasts 1 billion.

Stickers 
Stickers and games are an important part of the Line experience and the company’s business model. The Tokyo-based corporation earns more than $270 million from selling packs of stickers, according to CNBC. Line has called stickers — which come in themed packs featuring characters — the “main pillar” of its communications business. More recently, apps like Facebook Messenger and Apple’s iMessage have followed suit by incorporating stickers into their services.
Apps and Services
Line’s platform reaches far beyond basic messaging and calling. The company operates its own mobile wallet service called Line Pay, as well as a news service called Line News, which allows media outlets to create accounts to distribute content. It has also experimented with grocery delivery in Thailand and launched an Uber-like ride hailing service in Tokyo. Content also accounts for a chunk of Line’s popularity, with the company’s mobile games racking up a cumulative 628 million downloads, according to CNBC. Line also operates its own music and video streaming services.
How it Started
Line was created to provide communication during the aftermath of the natural disasters that struck Japan in 2011. Employees of NHN Japan, which runs the country’s Naver search engine, created Line after a tsunami and earthquake disrupted phone service. Line eventually became a unit of the company and reached 50 million users in just over one year, according to Reuters. By comparison, it took Facebook more than three years to hit 58 million users.