Elice shares fall 32% on first morning of Kosdaq trading despite IPO demand
Key Facts
Elice shares fell 32% in morning trading on their debut on South Korea's Kosdaq market on October 20, 2026, according to EL7 coverage, despite strong demand for the initial public offering. Trading began after the company announced an offering of 2,222,000 shares, according to its statement issued before pricing. Elice set the bottom of its indicative price range at 70,400 won per share. The top of the range was 90,500 won per share, according to the same announcement. The company's market debut coincided with announced plans to expand its computing infrastructure and operations spanning AI cloud and AI transformation services.
In financial results presented before the listing, Elice said consolidated revenue for the first half of 2026 reached 344 units of one hundred million won each. Consolidated operating profit for the same period was 103 units on the same monetary basis, according to the company statement. First-half revenue alone amounted to 87% of revenue for the whole of 2025, according to the comparison published by Elice. It also reported earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of 232 units of one hundred million won each for the first half. It said its EBITDA margin reached 68% in the same period.
Elice divides its core operations into AI cloud and AI transformation businesses, according to its description in the listing announcement. Its operations encompass infrastructure and cloud computing, alongside transformation applications using these technologies. In an April 2026 strategy presentation, Chief Executive Kim Jae-won discussed how to assess the competitiveness of this infrastructure. He said: "The competitiveness of AI infrastructure depends on how efficiently graphics processors are used, not on their number." He thus placed the efficient use of computing resources at the centre of the company's competitive vision, according to his remarks in the strategy presentation.
On planned computing capacity, Elice announced it would deploy a total of 2,560 graphics processors, according to its data centre statement. The company identified the processors to be used as the "B300" model. The plan announced before the listing includes distributing this equipment across 4 modular AI data centre buildings. Each planned building will house 640 graphics processors, according to the allocation announced by the company. These facilities form part of Elice's announced expansion of the infrastructure underpinning its AI cloud business.
In presenting its modular data centre model, Elice compares construction times with those of conventional centres, according to its strategy published in April 2026. The company said a modular centre could be built in about 3 months. By comparison, it estimated construction of conventional data centres would take more than roughly two years, according to the comparison it presented. Alongside its infrastructure plans, its strategy includes expanding operations outside South Korea, according to its pre-listing announcement. The company intends to base this expansion on its existing entities in the United States, Japan and Singapore, which it identified as bases for its overseas operations.
In its computing supply business, Elice announced its selection to participate in a South Korean government project to provide graphics processing resources. It was selected alongside several other successful suppliers, according to the company's statement on its work with the AI research sector. Resources provided under the project are allocated to academic researchers, according to Elice's description of the beneficiaries. Beneficiaries also include researchers in industry, within the scope of the high-performance computing resource supply announced by the company. The supply schedule runs from July through March of the following year, according to the dates in Elice's announcement.