Line, a Japanese subsidiary of Naver listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, will be delisted on the 29th.
According to the Nikken Asian Review, Line held an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting the previous day to vote on the merger of shares to integrate with Yahoo’s ZHD.
As a result, Line will leave the Japanese stock market. After about four years and four months since it went public in July 2016.
Line’s monthly users in four major countries and regions, including Japan, rose only 3% from 162 million in September 2016 to 167 million in September this year. Because of its struggle against WhatsApp in Indonesia. The SEA country is a strong place to explore overseas markets after its listing.
Line stock price rose 23 percent from 4,345 yen to 5,360 yen on the first day of its listing. Sales grew 62 percent from 140.7 billion yen in 2016 to 227.4 billion yen last year based on December’s settlement. However, due to large investments in fintech and AI, net profit turned from a surplus of 6.7 billion yen to a deficit of 46.8 billion yen.
Line, delisted for future merger with Yahoo Japan
After the merger in March next year, the two companies will have Z Holdings under the wing of their parent companies Naver and Softbank. And Line and Yahoo will become their subsidiaries.
Nikkei said Line boasts strengths in voice recognition and natural language processing. And Yahoo is proud of its strengths in recommended engines that analyze behavioral data. Predicting that the two companies with abundant AI resources will work together to develop more advanced AI services.
Specific negotiations for the integration of Line and Z Holdings began in earnest in August this year. The official integration date has been set for March next year. Nikkei said that the two companies are currently holding sub-committees regularly in each business sector. It is to discuss ways to maximize synergy effects from the integration.
