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# KOSDAQ: Korean AI Cloud Firm Elice Sinks 32% in KOSDAQ Debut Despite 408-to-1 Retail Demand
- URL: https://www.thealphaagentic.com/elice-kosdaq-ipo-ai-datacenter/
- Published: 2026-10-20T07:33:41.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T17:10:16.000Z
- Description: Elice priced its IPO at the top of its range and drew 408-to-1 retail demand, then closed 32% below the 90,500-won offer on its first day.
- Author: Eli Yang
- Tags: News, Datacenters, AI, Deals & Earnings, #pair-elice-kosdaq-ipo-ai-datacenter

Elice (KOSDAQ: 0158S0), a Seoul-based AI cloud and modular datacenter operator, [began trading on KOSDAQ](https://www.sedaily.com/market/domesticStock/stockNotice/856097?ref=thealphaagentic.com) on Tuesday. It closed at 61,500 won, down 32.04% from its 90,500-won IPO price. Retail investors had bid for 408 times the shares on offer. The debut gives an early read on how investors in Asia price GPU cloud capacity. Local media tied the drop to [worries about CoreWeave and other "neoclouds"](https://www.mt.co.kr/stock/2026/10/20/2026102009284786599?ref=thealphaagentic.com).

## A debut entirely below the offer price

The stock opened at 75,700 won, 16.4% below the IPO price. Its high of 77,700 won came in the first minute of trading, and it never reached the offer. The low was 56,500 won, down 37.6%, at 2:11 p.m. KST.

The rest of Seoul fell too. The KOSPI [dropped 3.73%](https://m.stock.naver.com/domestic/index/KOSPI?ref=thealphaagentic.com), and the small-cap index Elice trades on [lost 3.33%](https://m.stock.naver.com/domestic/index/KOSDAQ?ref=thealphaagentic.com).

At the close, Elice's market value was about 684.4 billion won, based on [11,128,864 listed shares](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20261006000451&ref=thealphaagentic.com). At the IPO price, the company was valued at [about 1 trillion won](https://biz.chosun.com/stock/stock%5Fgeneral/2026/10/06/64D6FPEBOJBXPH5EOJ6BVUIQAE/?ref=thealphaagentic.com).

![Elice one-minute share price on Oct. 20, 2026, below its 90,500-won IPO price all session](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b0/f1/b0f115e2-04db-4451-bca9-8288bfdeb3a5/content/images/2026/10/korea-datacenter-ipo-2026-10-20-intraday-v2.png)

Elice opened 16% below its IPO price and closed 32% lower. Source: Naver Finance one-minute data, matched to the KRX daily bar; IPO price from DART. Chart: Alpha Agentic.

## Strong books, weak tape

Demand going in was heavy. [In the institutional book, 2,367 institutions](https://www.mt.co.kr/stock/2026/10/20/2026102009284786599?ref=thealphaagentic.com) bid, for a ratio of 388.84 to 1\. The price was set at the top of the 70,400-to-90,500-won range. By quantity, [97.3% of bids](https://biz.chosun.com/stock/stock%5Fgeneral/2026/10/06/64D6FPEBOJBXPH5EOJ6BVUIQAE/?ref=thealphaagentic.com) came in at or above the top.

The retail tranche of 555,500 shares drew [226.7 million shares of orders](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20261013000356&ref=thealphaagentic.com), or 408.17 to 1\. Subscription deposits [totaled about 10.26 trillion won](https://www.mt.co.kr/stock/2026/10/20/2026102009284786599?ref=thealphaagentic.com).

Lock-ups were thinner. Institutions pledged to hold [31.3% of their 1,666,500-share allocation](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20261013000356&ref=thealphaagentic.com). About two-thirds of those pledged shares were locked for just 15 days. By Alpha Agentic's count from the filings, about 1.79 million shares, or 16.1% of listed shares, were free to trade on day one. That is unlocked institutional and retail allocations plus 89,880 unrestricted existing shares.

## The business: GPU cloud on modular datacenters

Elice was founded in 2015 and started in AI education. It now sells AI cloud and "AX" (AI transformation) services. AI cloud made up [76.2% of first-half revenue](https://www.etoday.co.kr/news/view/2617511?ref=thealphaagentic.com), up from 6.6% in 2023\. KRX still classifies it as a [software developer](https://www.sedaily.com/market/domesticStock/stockNotice/856097?ref=thealphaagentic.com).

Its core product is the AI PMDC, a prefabricated, modular GPU datacenter. The company says one can be [built in about three months](https://www.hankyung.com/article/2026093047326?ref=thealphaagentic.com), versus 24 to 36 months for a conventional facility.

The company also gave its capacity figures at a [Sept. 30 IPO briefing](https://zdnet.co.kr/view/?no=20260930123837&ref=thealphaagentic.com). It says it runs about 10 megawatts in the Seoul capital region and has secured power for another 40 MW in the southwest and 80 MW in the southeast, or 130 MW in total. It says it targets the southwest site by year-end and the southeast in 2027\. Those are company claims. We could not find the 80 MW southeast figure or the 130 MW total in the prospectus. The prospectus does say the southwest (Honam) center [can scale to 40 MW](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20261006000451&ref=thealphaagentic.com), with about 10 MW now under construction.

Elice names [LG AI Research, NC AI, Nota AI and Scatter Lab](https://www.hankyung.com/article/2026093047326?ref=thealphaagentic.com) among its private customers. CEO Kim Jae-won said it has about 1,200 cloud customers.

First-half revenue was [34.4 billion won](https://www.hankyung.com/article/2026093047326?ref=thealphaagentic.com), up 202.2%. Operating profit was 10.3 billion won, and EBITDA was 23.2 billion won. For 2025, revenue was [39.5 billion won](https://www.mt.co.kr/stock/2026/10/20/2026102009284786599?ref=thealphaagentic.com) and operating profit 5.2 billion won.

Government work drives much of it. Sales to the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), a state body, were [65.59% of first-half revenue](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20261006000451&ref=thealphaagentic.com), up from 34.27% in 2025\. About 23 billion won of first-half revenue came from [government GPU-leasing fees paid in advance](https://www.etoday.co.kr/news/view/2617511?ref=thealphaagentic.com) last year.

## The deal and the backers

All [2,222,000 shares were new](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20261013000356&ref=thealphaagentic.com); no existing holders sold. Gross proceeds were 201.09 billion won. That is about $151 million at Tuesday's 3:30 p.m. Seoul closing rate of [1,328.1 won per dollar](https://www.mt.co.kr/economy/2026/10/20/2026102015350643046?ref=thealphaagentic.com).

Net proceeds to Elice are [200.93 billion won, per the final prospectus](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20261006000451&ref=thealphaagentic.com). That adds 3.01 billion won from 33,269 extra new shares the underwriters must buy at the IPO price. It subtracts 3.17 billion won of issuance costs, mostly a 3.03 billion won underwriting fee. The prospectus says Elice may also pay a performance fee of up to 1.5% of the offering, which is not in that estimate. At the bottom of the price range, the [August filing](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20260821000670&ref=thealphaagentic.com) had put net proceeds at 154.93 billion won.

All net proceeds go to datacenters. The plan puts [28.7 billion won into a capital-region site](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20261006000451&ref=thealphaagentic.com) tied to a NIPA program and 172.3 billion won into the new Honam PMDC center for private customers.

Kim, the founder, holds [about 27.6%](https://www.sedaily.com/market/domesticStock/stockNotice/856097?ref=thealphaagentic.com). Altos Ventures' Korea fund holds [19.49%](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20261006000451&ref=thealphaagentic.com). Other holders include Korea Development Bank, LB Investment, Naver (KRX: 035420), Samsung Venture Investment and Vertex Growth, which is [part of Singapore's Temasek group](https://www.thebell.co.kr/front/newsview.asp?key=202608271427352360102534&ref=thealphaagentic.com). Major investors agreed to voluntary lock-ups of up to one year.

## The U.S. read-through

Elice's bankers priced it off [eight overseas peers](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20261006000451&ref=thealphaagentic.com), seven of them U.S.-listed. They used S&P Capital IQ data as of Aug. 14.

| Peer               | Ticker     | EV/EBITDA (x) |
| ------------------ | ---------- | ------------- |
| DigitalOcean       | DOCN       | 50.69         |
| Vertiv             | VRT        | 40.09         |
| Digital Realty     | DLR        | 28.28         |
| Equinix            | EQIX       | 27.54         |
| CoreWeave          | CRWV       | 24.24         |
| Schneider Electric | SU (Paris) | 20.65         |
| GDS Holdings       | GDS        | 14.94         |
| VNET Group         | VNET       | 10.58         |
| Simple average     | —          | 27.13         |

*Source: Elice final prospectus (DART), S&P Capital IQ data, Aug. 14, 2026 prices.*

They applied the 27.13 average to 38.95 billion won of trailing 12-month EBITDA, then discounted the result by 14.7% to 33.65% to set the range. The prospectus notes that correcting depreciation figures for VNET and Schneider would lift the average to about 27.42 times.

**Our calculation:** At Tuesday's close, Elice's market value of 684.4 billion won was about 17.6 times that 38.95-billion-won EBITDA. That compares market value, not enterprise value, so it is not a true EV/EBITDA multiple. For a rough EV, we add June 30 net debt of 24.7 billion won from the prospectus and subtract the 200.9 billion won of net IPO proceeds. That gives about 508 billion won, or roughly 13 times trailing EBITDA. It ignores cash flows since June.

That discount landed in a market that was already cooling on the same names. On Monday, the last U.S. session before the debut, the peers Elice was priced against slipped: Equinix (NASDAQ: EQIX) closed down 1.04% at $975.71, Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR) fell 1.69% to $173.00, and CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) eased 0.44% to $61.12 after an 11.91% drop on Friday. For U.S. investors, the closest fund proxy is the Global X Data Center & Digital Infrastructure ETF (NASDAQ: DTCR), which holds [12.94% in Digital Realty and 12.57% in Equinix](https://www.globalxetfs.com/funds/dtcr/?ref=thealphaagentic.com) and dipped 0.31% to $25.70\. Elice is also not the only regional AI infrastructure listing to meet resistance this month: Nvidia-backed Australian operator Firmus [withdrew its planned IPO](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/09/nvidia-ai-firmus-ipo-.html?ref=thealphaagentic.com), citing market volatility.

### The Alpha Take

Elice priced at the top of its range on 389-to-1 institutional demand and 408-to-1 retail demand, then closed 32% lower. Investors wanted Asian GPU capacity in the book but not in the aftermarket.

The gap with overseas peers is wide. The bankers' comps averaged 27 times EV/EBITDA on Aug. 14 prices. By our rough math, the close values Elice at about 13 times trailing EBITDA on an EV basis, or 17.6 times on market value. A weak Seoul tape, with the KOSPI down 3.73%, explains part of the drop. Government reliance likely matters too: NIPA supplied about two-thirds of first-half revenue. That suggests Asian neocloud listings may be priced on their own customer mix rather than on U.S. multiples. Firmus's pulled IPO points the same way.

### What to Watch

- **Nov. 4 lock-up expiry:** About [337,000 institutional shares](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20261013000356&ref=thealphaagentic.com) with 15-day pledges can be sold.
- **Nov. 20 release:** About [1.33 million existing shares](https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20261006000451&ref=thealphaagentic.com) unlock at one month, by our count from the prospectus, along with 35,654 institutional shares on one-month pledges.
- **Execution:** Watch whether the Honam site opens by year-end and whether private contracts reduce reliance on NIPA revenue.