Webtoon Entertainment, an online comics platform and one of South Korea's latest successful cultural exports, has set its U.S. IPO at the upper end of the price range, valuing the company at $2.7 billion.

The Los Angeles-based company, controlled by the South Korean web portal giant Naver, announced on Wednesday that it will sell 15 million shares at $21 each, after previously offering them in a range of $18 to $21. The IPO will raise $315 million, and the shares will be traded on the Nasdaq in the USA on Thursday.

South Korean companies like Naver and Kakao have led the digital transformation of the manga industry and made online comics internationally popular following the global success of K-Pop, Korean films, and dramas.

Webtoon Entertainment has approximately 170 million monthly active users in more than 150 countries, including 7.7 million users in the USA. The main markets are South Korea and Japan, which together account for 27 percent of the global readership.

The IPO is expected to generate significant interest among investors, as online comics have become a source of inspiration for the entertainment industry. Many popular TV dramas, including "Lovely Runner," "Moving," and "Hellbound," are based on so-called webtoons.

BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, has expressed interest in purchasing up to $50 million worth of shares according to the company's SEC filings.

Im Hee-seok, an analyst at Mirae Asset, said in a recent report that the US IPO will be successful given the “explosive growth” of the industry in recent years. However, there are also concerns regarding the declining revenue growth rates of the industry following a pandemic-induced boom.

Industry experts hope that the success of TV series based on webtoons will attract new international readers to their platforms, as global fans seek out the sources of their favorite stories and characters.

Webtoon Entertainment, founded in 2005, reported a net loss of $145 million last year on revenues of $1.28 billion. Naver will hold 63.4 percent of the company's shares after the IPO, while Tokyo-based LY Corporation will own nearly 25 percent.

Analysts said it would be difficult to increase the stock price of the parent company in South Korea through the IPO. Naver and LY are embroiled in a dispute over data sovereignty between South Korea and Japan after Naver's systems hosting the Line Yahoo internet service suffered security breaches.

Webtoons – Comic strips designed for reading on smartphones and tablets – are still relatively unknown outside of East Asia.

Nevertheless, South Korean companies are accelerating their expansion beyond the region and are expanding their target audiences in Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

Webtoon Entertainment offers services in 10 languages, including English, Korean, Japanese, French, Spanish, and German. In 2021, Naver acquired the Canadian company Wattpad, a platform for web novels with 89 million users, for 600 million USD.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and Evercore led the offering.