CVC, Goldman among shortlisted investors in TVing

CVC Capital and Goldman Sachs Principal Investment Area (PIA) are among the shortlisted investors in South Korea's over-the-top (OTT) streaming service TVing Co., which plans to raise about 300 billion won ($250 million) in a pre-IPO share sale.

Woori Private Equity and a consortium of Mirae Asset Capital Co. and Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. were also chosen as final candidates for the pre-IPO placement, managed by Nomura Securities, according to investment banking sources on Friday.

The OTT arm of CJ ENM Co., South Korea's entertainment giant, will receive final bids from the shortlisted investors around next month and sell the new shares in TVing to them.

TVing is proposing its enterprise value at about 1.5 trillion won.

CJ ENM holds a 67.6% stake in the OTT platform, followed by Naver with 15.4% and JTBC Studios Co. with 14.1%.

The fundraising comes as TVing is preparing to make inroads into Japan and Taiwan next year and into the US in 2023, tapping the overseas subscribers of South Korean online giant Naver Corp. and global strategic partners. 

Since its hive-off from CJ ENM in October 2020, TVing has produced 25 pieces of original content, with the number of its paid users trebling to 2 million. But it is still trailing Netflix and hometown rival Wavve, whose paid subscribers in South Korea total 4 million and over 2 million, respectively. 

Write to Jun-ho Cha at chacha@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article