PRND Company

PRND Company is a South Korean operator of HeyDealer, a mobile platform for used-car transactions. Its core service is a reverse auction in which an individual seller submits vehicle information and photographs and then receives real-time bids from dealers across the country, choosing the highest offer. The company describes the model as reducing information asymmetry and simplifying the process of selling a used car; a simplified variant of the service is marketed as HeyDealer Zero, and a vehicle-history transparency service was launched under the name "Hidden History of Used Cars."

Since 2023 PRND has extended beyond brokerage into adjacent parts of the used-car value chain, internalizing financing, vehicle inspection and appraisal, and direct purchase and resale of vehicles. By the end of 2025 it consolidated seven subsidiaries, including inspection and appraisal units (Blue Diagnostic Appraisal, Green Automobile Appraisal, Purple Diagnostic Appraisal), the direct-purchase and sales entities PRND Revolt and PRND Techbay, and Cabazo. The direct-purchase businesses drove most of the group's revenue growth but had not reached break-even, and the company has invested in AI-based vehicle diagnosis systems as part of this build-out.

The company is preparing an initial public offering on Korea's KOSPI market, having appointed Mirae Asset Securities as lead manager and KB Securities as co-manager in November 2025, and has restructured outstanding redeemable convertible preferred shares into convertible preferred shares to improve reported financial ratios under Korean IFRS ahead of listing.

Business model

PRND's core platform business earns brokerage fees from used-car transactions arranged through HeyDealer's dealer bidding marketplace, a high-margin fee model that produced a 23.9% standalone operating margin in 2025. The group has added lower-margin, capital-intensive activities through subsidiaries that buy vehicles directly and resell them, along with inspection/appraisal and financing units, which roughly doubled consolidated revenue relative to the standalone platform while reducing consolidated operating margin to 4.8%.

Commission/fee revenue from brokering used-car sales on the HeyDealer platform, supplemented by vehicle sales revenue from direct-purchase and resale subsidiaries and fees from vehicle inspection and appraisal affiliates.

Traction

As of January 2024 HeyDealer reported 13 million subscribers and cumulative transaction value above KRW 10 trillion. Standalone 2025 revenue was KRW 151.7 billion (up 33.1% year on year) with operating profit of KRW 36.2 billion (up 493.4%) and net profit of KRW 18.9 billion, a swing to profit; consolidated 2025 revenue was KRW 299.7 billion with operating profit of KRW 14.5 billion. Standalone revenue was about KRW 39 billion in 2021, implying roughly fourfold growth over four years. Subsidiary PRND Revolt grew revenue from KRW 4.2 billion in 2024 to KRW 68.7 billion in 2025, and PRND Techbay recorded KRW 81.1 billion of 2025 revenue.

Latest developments

Two early-investor venture capital firms sold secondary shares in PRND worth a combined KRW 200 billion (about $136 million), split into KRW 110 billion and KRW 90 billion blocks, with buyers including domestic VC firms, foreign investment houses and corporate investors; the transaction was priced by reference to the last primary round and involved preferred shares whose redemption rights and conversion-price adjustment clauses were removed, converting them into convertible preferred shares ahead of the planned IPO. The company is targeting a KOSPI debut in the second half of next year at a trillion-won-level valuation.