South Korea’s Haimarrow Food Service Co. (Haimarrow) that owns homegrown fast-food chain Mom’s Touch is planning to join the secondary Korea Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (Kosdaq) market in October at the earliest to finance its expansion at home and abroad.

According to sources on Wednesday, Haimarrow is planning a back-door listing, a reverse public offering for a company that does not qualify for listing through the purchase of an already publicly-trading company. It eyes taking over Kosdaq-listed KTB Special Purpose Acquisition Company 3 Co. (KTB SPAC III) in October. It submitted securities registration to the financial authorities on June 17.

The Mom’s Touch is fast-food brand born and bred locally. It has shown fast growth with sales jumping by 87 percent to 148.6 billion won ($129 million) in 2015 from 79.5 billion won in 2014. The operating income also surged 32 percent during the same period to 8.9 billion won.

A number of investment bankers, venture capital, securities firms, and private equity funds are said to have eyes on food service operator. Haimarrow, however, is determined to focus on the listing without making any other moves such as selling off majority stake and inviting additional investments.

“The company has prepared for the listing during the last 12 months, and will get everything ready to go public,” said Haimarrow President Chung Hyun-sik, adding “Currently, we are not considering for any stake sales and other fund-raising projects.”

Haimarrow plans to concentrate on expanding its business and upgrading its corporate value by increasing the number of its Mom’s Touch chains to 1,000 stores from current 900 outlets by the end of this year, and opening additional overseas outlets in Vietnam and Taiwan.

By Kim Hyo-hye

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