Chemical materials firm Lake Materials is looking to get listed on the tech-heavy Kosdaq market in March this year, according to the CEO Kim Jin-dong at its IPO press conference on Jan. 17.
“Our aim is to push up semiconductor business to account for over 30% of our total sales, while our LED business is pulled down to 40%,” Kim said. He was highlighting the firm’s plans to reduce its reliance on the LED business and diversity its portfolio.
DB Finance will be the deal manager. Lake Materials specializes in creating organic metal compound and manufacturing Trimethyl Aluminum (TMA). Worldwide there are a total of just four companies including Lake Materials that possess TMA technology.
The other three are US-based Grace and Akzo Nobel, along with Lanxes of Germany. Among the four companies, Lake Materials is the only firm capable of business in a wide array of areas including LED, semiconductor, displays, solar energy and chemical catalyst.
The firm has lately added more clients to its semiconductor division, including Samsung Electronics, Kioxia (previously Toshiba) and TSMC. In Taiwan, Lake Materials runs a branch.
In the LED market, Lake Materials is the world’s largest maker of LED precursor. Clients include Samsung Electronics, Seoul Semiconductor and Epistar. In the chemical catalyst division, clients include LG Chem, while Hanwha Q cells is a major client of its solar energy material business.
In 2019, LED accounted for 45% of Lake Materials’ business, while semiconductor took up 29%, solar energy 18%, and chemical catalyst 6%. A year earlier in 2018, Lake Materials’ sales stood at KRW 35.2 billion, while operating profit reached KRW 3.5 billion.
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