We’ll start nice and simple here folks, an IPO (Initial Public Offering) is the first sale of a company’s stock to the public – either to raise capital or to begin trading as a public company.

Now that we’ve got that out the way let’s talk about Japan’s Line Corp., the company behind one of Asia’s most popular messaging apps. They’ll be going public mid-July or so, with the aim of raising between $1 and $2 billion.

That makes this the biggest tech IPO of the year, with this below from Bloomberg:

The Tokyo-based company aims to get about half the money from U.S. investors as it plots a long-term expansion there after pushing further into Southeast Asia, said the people [familiar with the matter], asking not to be identified because the matter is private…

No business has raised more than $150 million in a technology IPO in 2016, even though more than 160 private companies are currently valued at $1 billion or more.

For an indication on just how things are slowing down in terms of IPOs for tech companies check these figures:

Global tech companies raised about $900 million in the first quarter of this year, down from $6.5 billion during same period in 2014 and $2.8 billion in the first quarter of last year.

Then a little more on Line’s highly successful messaging app:

The firm reported revenue of 120 billion yen in 2015, growing by 40 percent from the year prior.

It had 215 million monthly active users at the end of last year, implying that on average it earned $5.10 from each user last year…

At $5 billion to $6 billion, Line would be valued at 4.5 times to 5.4 times its 2015 sales, according to Bloomberg estimates. That’s cheaper than Facebook’s price-to-sales ratio of 11.4 times, based on revenue estimates. It’s also cheaper than Tencent’s 8.7 times ratio, but more expensive than Twitter’s 3.6 times ratio.

When you’re a tech company and you’re being mentioned in the same breath as Facebook and Twitter you must be doing something right.

[source:bloomberg]