YouTube channel Sampro TV fails to debut on Kosdaq
Sampro TV, one of the most influential finance YouTube channels in Korea with over 2.3 million subscribers, failed to get the green light from a listing review committee at the Korea Exchange (KRX), the country’s sole bourse operator.
It has been seven months since e-broadcasting corp., the operator of the YouTube channel, announced its plan last July to pursue a public listing on the techheavy Kosdaq market through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
According to the investment banking industry Friday, the bourse’s listing review committee decided on Thursday not to approve the initial public offering (IPO) of e-broadcasting corp. The listing committee is said to have raised doubts about the sustainability of Sampro TV’s business model as a YouTube channel.
Sampro TV posted an annual revenue of 28.1 billion won ($21 million) in 2022 with an operating profit of 7.6 billion. Aside from earnings from advertising, the channel’s business model lacks other clear sources of revenue.
Furthermore, the YouTube channel has recently seen a slowdown in the growth rate of subscribers, implying a gradual weakening of its comparative online influence. The number of subscribers soared rapidly from about 660,000 in 2020 to 1.45 million in 2021 and reached 2 million in 2022. Despite the forecasts by the company that the number of subscribers would surpass 2.5 million by last year, it still lingers at around 2.38 million as of Friday.
Sampro TV’s view counts are on a declining trend. According to Playboard, a YouTube channel data aggregator, last year’s annual cumulative views for SamproTV stood at 252 million, a 29 percent decrease compared to the previous year’s 355 million views.
The combined factors of the slowdown in the number of subscribers — the main source of the broadcasting company’s revenues — as well as the decreasing view counts over the past two years indicate that the company’s rosy revenue estimates do not actually align with reality.
The channel’s operator forecast in public disclosure information that it expects its annual revenue to reach 35.2 billion won this year, 47.2 billion won in 2025, 61.7 billion won in 2026 and 77.7 billion won in 2027.
Based on these estimates, the proposed corporate valuation by the company itself for the SPAC listing was approximately 250 billion won.
“The main reason behind the rejection from the KRX’s Kosdaq listing committee was that the company presented overly optimistic projections of its future earnings, which led to an excessive inflation of its corporate value, failing to persuade the bourse’s listing committee,” a market insider said.
In comparison, Korea Economic TV, a Kosdaq-listed finance news cable network, has a market cap of about 130 billion won.