[THE INVESTOR] Cash-strapped E-Land Group’s retail subsidiary E-Land Retail has decided to delay its plans to go public this year.

“During our pre-IPO process, we considered going public in 2018 at first, but have now changed our plans to next year,”a E-Land Retail spokesperson told The Investor. He added that the company will first focus on going public with shares to create REITs with its three outlets, which are located in Ilsan, Pyeongchon and Yatap, Gyeonggi Province, as planned in June this year. 

E-Land Group decided to delay going public this year because it expects the company’s valuation to increase after its improvements to the financial structure get reflected. According to the company, E-Land Retail posted sales of 2.63 trillion won (US$2.45 billion) and its operating profit reached 234 billion won last year. Furthermore, E-Land World, the group’s de facto holding unit’s debt-equity ratio in the first quarter this year dropped to 168 percent from 198 percent in 2017.

However, concerns about its financial structure still remain as only half of E-Land Group’s 2018 funding goal of 1 trillion won had been reached so far. Furthermore, it also has around 300 billion won debt that has to be paid by the end of next month.

The group had originally planned to list E-Land Retail in 2016. The plan was ditched due to growing debt and labor disputes of E-Land Retail’s food and dining subsidiary E-Land Park. In April 2017, E-Land Group spun off the problematic E-Land Park from the retail giant for a successful IPO.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)