Although mobile game publisher Kakao Games’ initial public offering subscription last week was the talk of the town in South Korea, some retail investors who took part in the preorder session did not even receive a single share due to heated competition, according to news reports on Sunday.

The gaming firm attracted a total of some 58.5 trillion won ($49.3 billion) from 417,000 people during its IPO subscription for retail investors, which took place Tuesday and Wednesday. The subscription was carried out via three stock brokerage firms -- Korea Investment & Securities, Samsung Securities and KB Securities. The three underwriters were allocated 1.76 million shares, 1.28 million shares and 160,000 shares, respectively.

Each individual trader put down a deposit of some 140 million won on average during the subscription period. The number of investors who deposited 100 million won or more stood at 7,800, or 1.8 percent of the total. It is estimated that an investor with a 100 million won subscription deposit would have received some 50 Kakao Games shares. The Pangyo-based game company offered a total of 16 million new shares at a price of 24,000 won.

An investor with a deposit of a bit more than 2 billion won was given 112 shares -- the highest number of shares distributed to an individual. Based on Kakao Games’ offering price, the 112 shares are valued at around 2.7 million won.

As investors flocked to the subscription, the number of shares given to each subscription participant was relatively small, according to market watchers. During the stock preorder, which set the record competition rate of 1500-1, some 40,000 participants did not even receive a single share, according to a market official.

“Some 90 percent of the participants received at least one share, but the other 10 percent missed their chance,” an official from the stock industry said.

The Kakao Games IPO, scheduled for Oct. 10, comes after another high-profile stock offering by drugmaker SK Pharmaceuticals in June.

Meanwhile, Big Hit Entertainment, the music label behind BTS, is also waiting in line to go public. The company, led by CEO and music producer Bang Si-hyuk, is slated to start a book building process among domestic and foreign institutional investors Sept. 24-25, and its own IPO subscription Oct. 5-6, before going public in October.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)