Shares of South Korean beauty-device maker APR rose 27% in their public debut Tuesday on the Korea Exchange, valuing the company at about 2.4 trillion won ($1.8 billion).
APR raised 94.8 billion won (about $71 million) in an initial public offering of 379,000 shares at 250,000 won apiece, well above the anticipated selling range of 147,000 won to 200,000 won a share. Its shares closed Tuesday at 317,500 won. APR will use the proceeds of the IPO to expand its production facilities, fund overseas marketing efforts (focused on social media influencers), especially in the U.S., Japan and China; and fund research and development.
Investors that backed APR before its IPO include CJ Onstyle, part of Korean billionaire Lee Jay-hyun’s CJ Group; SJ Investment Partners, a Korean VC firm whose portfolio includes AI chip startup DeepX and serialized fiction app Radish (which was acquired by Kakao Entertainment in 2021 for $440 million); and state-owned Industrial Bank of Korea. APR achieved unicorn status when CJ Onstyle—the commerce division of CJ ENM, an entertainment unit of CJ Group—invested in the company in June last year.
APR, based in Seoul’s 555-meter Lotte World Tower (the country’s tallest skyscraper), was cofounded by Byunghoon Kim and Lee Ju-kwang in 2014. The duo was featured on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2017. Lee left the company in 2019. Kim, 35, whose English name is Victor, serves as the company’s CEO and is its largest shareholder with a 35% stake.
APR, which stands for Advance People’s Real life, is best known for its Medicube Age-R brand products, like Booster Healer devices. Branded as Medicube Age-R Booster-H, the devices use electrical stimulation to help the skin better absorb skincare products. Launched in 2022, it got a boost when Hailey Bieber, model, entrepreneur and the wife of pop star Justin Bieber, said she uses the device in a TikTok video last year. APR said in its prospectus that it has sold 1.6 million Medicube Age-R products domestically and outside of South Korea as of November 2023.
Beauty devices accounted for 82% of APR’s 372 billion won (about $280 million) revenues in the first three quarters of last year, almost as much as the company made in all of 2022. Its fashion unit, called Nerdy, and photo booth business made up the rest. Net income for the period was 57 billion won compared with 30 billion won in fiscal 2022, thanks to lower expenses.
About 40% of APR’s products are sold outside South Korea. Its fastest-growing markets are mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and the U.S., and the company is preparing to enter France, India, Qatar, Thailand and the U.K.
People around the world are buying APR’s devices because of its technological edge, says CEO Kim. “We believe our innovative technology created a difference,” he says in emailed comments. “APR operates a corporate R&D center, ADC (APR Device Center), and manages around 70 patents regarding beauty devices’ electricity technology. APR becomes truly serious about the technology that would create better product efficiency.” In addition to ADC, which was launched in 2022, APR also operates the Global Dermatological Research Institute in Seoul, opened in 2020, and its own factory, also in Seoul, established in April last year.
Kim also credits APR’s strong lineup of new products. “APR is not a company making one one-hit item and keep selling it over and over,” he says. “So far, we’ve launched seven beauty devices, and for the seventh, named Booster Pro, we put our know-how and experience from the previous six devices together.” Kim adds that APR will launch another skincare device in the first half of this year and three to four new devices by the end of the year.
To help handle the growing lineup of devices, APR is building a second factory, slated to be completed in the second quarter. The second factory, located in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, will boost the company’s capacity to eight million units a year.
It helps that the market for at-home beauty devices is growing. The worldwide at-home beauty device market is estimated to grow to $34.8 billion in 2030 from $5.5 billion in 2024, according to data from Euromonitor and Globaldata cited in APR’s offering prospectus. “The market for home beauty devices has rapidly grown under the condition of Covid-19,” says Kim, as people went out less and beauty clinics were shut. “Now we’re in the stage of customers wondering if they should visit the beauty clinic or use a device at home, not the stage of choosing what brand I would choose.”
The beauty industry is a big creator of wealth globally. French billionaire Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, the granddaughter of the founder of L’Oreal, is the richest woman in the world; Bettencourt Meyers has a net worth of $98.6 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list. The Lauder family behind Estée Lauder was ranked No. 11 on Forbes’ list of the richest families in America, with a combined fortune of $25.9 billion. In South Korea, two beauty billionaires were featured in the list of the country’s top 50 richest people: Suh Kyung-bae (No. 15) of Amorepacific, South Korea’s largest cosmetic and skincare maker by market cap, and Kim Jung-woong (No. 34) of GP Club, which is best known for its line of JM Solution facial masks.
