이 기사는 2021년 04월 16일 06:05 thebell 에 표출된 기사입니다.

South Korea’s ecommerce giant Coupang is expected to be included on the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC)’s watch list of large conglomerates from this year.

Under the nation’s antitrust rules, conglomerates whose groups of businesses are worth more than a certain threshold in fair value become scrutiny by the watchdog.

While Coupang founder and chairman Bom Kim can avoid scrutiny for his personal financial deals thanks to his American nationality, Coupang will be subject to strict regulations on inter-affiliate trading within the conglomerate.

According to the company’s audit report, Coupang has Coupang Fullfillment Services, Ddnayo, Coupang Pay and CPLB under its wing. The ecommerce giant has separated them into affiliates for independent operation.

Other related parties include its overseas units such as Coupang USA. These companies are owned directly by Coupang, Inc, the parent company of Coupang.

It is notable that Coupang’s transaction with those related parties increased sharply last year. While profits provided by the related parties to Coupang were only 38 billion won ($34 million), expenses Coupang paid to them amounted to nearly 1.6 trillion won.

In 2019, Coupang earned only 13 billion won in profits from related parties and it paid 715.1 billion won to them. This indicates the amount of inter-affiliate transaction has nearly doubled in just one year.

This is because Coupang’s revenue almost doubled from 7.14 trillion won to 13.9 trillion won in the same period. Most of Coupang's affiliates are vertically integrated with Coupang's profit model, which makes their revenue directly linked to that of Coupang's.

Particularly, Coupang provided profits of 1.09 trillion won to Coupang Fulfillment Service in 2020, a two-fold increase from 582.4 billion in 2019.

Coupang also actively made financial transactions with its affiliates over the past year. It provided 300 billion won in loans to Coupang Pay last year and retrieved 299.8 billion won. CPLB was provided with 40 billion won.

Separately, Coupang injected 18.3 billion won into Coupang Pay via a rights offering and provided 1 billion won to CPLB through a rights offering. On the contrary, Coupang received 174.9 billion won from its parent through a rights offering in 2020, a sharp decrease from 791 billion won in the previous year. (Reporting by Eun-jin Choi)