Bulletin: Naver's U.S. Purchase Will Shrink Rating Headroom

This report does not constitute a rating action. Hong Kong (S&P Global Ratings) Oct. 6, 2022--Naver Corp.'s acquisition of Poshmark, a US-based re-commerce platform, for US$1.6 billion will moderately increase its debt leverage and narrow the buffer on the ratings. Although the South Korean internet conglomerate plans to fund this primarily with non-debt financing (including asset disposals), its adjusted debt-to-EBITDA ratio could increase to about 1.0x in 2022 after the acquisition. This is below our downgrade threshold of 1.5x but weaker than the 0.5x in 2022 we currently estimate, without the acquisition. Naver (A-/Stable/--) is buying Poshmark as part its global business expansion. Poshmark is the largest fashion re-commerce platform in the U.S., with US$1.8 billion of gross merchandise value

...Hong Kong (S&P Global Ratings) Oct. 6, 2022--Naver Corp.'s acquisition of Poshmark, a US-based re-commerce platform, for US$1.6 billion will moderately increase its debt leverage and narrow the buffer on the ratings. Although the South Korean internet conglomerate plans to fund this primarily with non-debt financing (including asset disposals), its adjusted debt-to-EBITDA ratio could increase to about 1.0x in 2022 after the acquisition. This is below our downgrade threshold of 1.5x but weaker than the 0.5x in 2022 we currently estimate, without the acquisition. Naver (A-/Stable/--) is buying Poshmark as part its global business expansion. Poshmark is the largest fashion re-commerce platform in the U.S., with US$1.8 billion of gross merchandise value in 2021 and 18.4 million monthly unique visitors. Naver sees growth opportunities in the fashion vertical and re-commerce business, a faster growing sub-segment of e-commerce in the US. The company plans to generate synergies by introducing...

Bulletin