Valuation of Pure Internet Business : An Exploratory Study

국내 순수 인터넷 기업평가에 관한 탐색적 연구

Due to the potential growing capability that reflects future value, the market value of internet business companies (IB) are still evaluated high although major players like Amazon continuously suffer losses. Then, how do investors valuate the potential growing capabilities given that traditional financial/accounting based valuation approaches seem to be inappropriate for IB. This study attempts to provide an answer to this issue. We, therefore, analyzed the predictability of various accounting and non-accounting variables for IB value. These include book value, net income, unique visitors, page view, reach rate, public float and institutional holdings. Because of being in infant stage and difficulties in obtaining necessary web traffic data, sample of 20 pure IB were selected from Korea Stock Exchange Market, KOSDAQ, and informal market. The results of this study showed that web traffic date had the strongest relationship with IB value. In particular, unique visitors and reach rate were found to be best predictors for IB value while page view was reasonable indicator. Interestingly, net income was not found to related to IB value. This calls for an attention to the typical characteristics of IB that my hinder the usage of traditional valuation approaches for IB. Another results revealed that none of both public float and institutional holdings was significantly associated with IB value, indicating market’s supply-demand factors were less important than traffic information.