TWICE's Label JYP Entertainment Rises To No. 1 Market Capitalization Among K-Pop Agencies

Earlier this year, Korean entertainment label JYP Entertainment became the second highest-valued company among the industry’s “Big 3,” and now this week the label’s market capitalization surpassed that of the former top K-pop agency SM Entertainment.

On Thursday (Aug. 30), JYP’s shares closed on the KOSDAQ at 31,300 KRW ($28.20 USD), up 2.29% from the day before, reports Yonhap. The increase pushed JYP's market capitalization, the market value of the company's outstanding shares, to 1.09 trillion KRW ($980.26 million USD), exceeding SM's of 1.08 trillion ($971.27 million USD). It is the first time since it became listed on the KOSDAQ in 2001, four years after its founding in 1997, that JYP emerged as the biggest entertainment firm by market capitalization, coming out ahead of former No. 1 SM Entertainment and now-No. 3 K-pop label YG Entertainment.

The stock price for JYP Entertainment shares on KOSDAQ has more than tripled since last August when shares vacillated around the 8,500 KRW mark.

The continued popularity of girl group TWICE, who has seen immense success throughout Asia and regularly tops charts in both South Korea and Japan, and boy band GOT7, who recently had one of the highest-grossing Stateside shows of the summer, plus the launch of several new promising artists, including rookie boy bands Stray Kids and Boy Story, have helped JYP see its best year. The growth is especially impressive considering that 2017 saw JYP’s legacy girl groups Wonder Girls and miss A disband and 10-year-old boy band 2PM go on-hiatus as members began to fulfill their mandatory service in the South Korean military.  

JYP’s shift into the top tier of South Korea’s entertainment companies comes after a year that’s seen the company publicly acknowledge its changing business and brand structure. The company, founded by Korean musician Park Jin-young, has begun to shift away from being dominated by a single person in recent years, resulting in a more varied approach to K-pop that has proven immensely lucrative. Earlier this year, Park gave a speech at GAN Accelerator during which he revealed that JYP artists each now have their own dedicated, all-encompassing business teams rather than different JYP departments managing varied facets of artists’ careers. Yonhap also reports that the selection process for singles and other creative decisions are now based on the tastes of an in-house panel of judges rather than solely Park.

Along with the direction of creative decisions bringing change to JYP, the company’s approach to international markets has also shifted. In the past, all JYP artists have been South Korea-based but the company recently launched Boy Story, a Chinese boy band focused on the C-pop market, and is planning to launch a Japanese girl group into the J-pop world. The label has several international artists under it at the moment, such as Hong Kong-born Jackson Wang of GOT7 who has simultaneously pursued a prominent solo career in China, but these are the first localized groups that JYP will launch distinctly aimed at their respective foreign market.

JYP's rise to have the top market capitalization among K-pop's "Big 3" comes amid a solid year for K-pop during which both SM Entertainment and YG Entertainment have seen major success with some artists, particularly respective girl groups Red Velvet and Blackpink, but are amid generational shifts: Two of SM's most popular long-lived acts, Girls' Generation and EXO, have yet to release music this year while the company has focused on bolstering newer acts Red Velvet and NCT. Meanwhile, YG's Winner, iKON and BlackPink have each seen hits in 2018 but the company is still weighted by last year's demise of 2NE1 along with prominent Korean boy band BIGBANG going on hiatus as members serve in the South Korean military.

2018 has proven to be a year of sizable shake-ups in the Korean music world. JYP’s overturning of the “Big 3” coincides with the global rise of BTS under Big Hit Entertainment, with that label seeing unprecedented success on a global stage. Though ostensible business rivals, the advent of the pair this year comes after a long history with one another: Big Hit founder Bang Si-hyuk was a former JYP executive who worked on many of the label’s earliest hits, most prominently for early boy band g.o.d, and Big Hit’s most prominent act prior to BTS was boy band 2AM, a ballad-focused counterpart to JYP’s dance-oriented 2PM. Both JYP and Big Hit have signed on to pursue multi-company business opportunities in 2018, and it is expected that each continues to see gains throughout the rest of the year.