GGRAsia – Exec at Double Down buyer best rewarded in S. Korea

Exec at Double Down buyer best rewarded in S. Korea

Aug 17, 2018 Newsdesk Latest News, Rest of Asia, Top of the deck

A boss at South Korea’s DoubleU Games Co Ltd, a company that last year paid US$825 million to acquire International Game Technology (IGT) Plc’s social casino unit Double Down Interactive LLC, has been named as that country’s best-compensated executive during the first half of 2018.

DoubleU Games’ vice president Park Shin-jeong earned the ranking not from his base salary and bonuses, but from selling 373,347 shares he received as stock options in April, for KRW23 billion (US$20.4 million).

That is according to data from South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service – cited by news outlet JoonAng Daily – and which compared compensation of senior executives at Kospi- and Kosdaq-listed companies.

Mr Park’s base salary was KRW175 million and his bonuses amounted to KRW350 million according to the cited information.

Another DoubleU Games senior executive ranked among the top five best-compensated executives in the six months to June 30. Kim Hyung-jin, an executive board member and head of DoubleU Games’ development centre, earned KRW8 billion during the reporting period, following a KRW7.69 billion stock option sale, reported the news outlet.

On March 27, the price of DoubleU Games’ Kosdaq-listed shares had reached a 12-month high of KRW73,000 apiece, according to Bloomberg data reviewed by GGRAsia. The stock has produced a one-year return of 20.45 percent, according to the business information service

DoubleU Games reported last week a net profit of about KRW46.7 billion for the first half of 2018, up 169.3 percent from the prior-year period. For the six months to June 30, the firm recorded an accumulated revenue of approximately KRW92.3 billion, an increase of 16.7 percent from a year earlier, said the firm in a regulatory filing.

In June last year, casino equipment and lottery services firm IGT announced DoubleU had paid cash to acquire Double Down Interactive. IGT added it intended to use the proceeds primarily to reduce its debt.

Double Down Interactive has been best known for its online DoubleDown Casino. At the time of the sale by IGT, the platform was described by several industry analysts as one of the most popular social casino platforms among North American consumers.