Naver to buy Poshmark for $1.2 billion

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss the expectations for Korean internet conglomerate company Naver’s $1.2 billion all-cash Poshmark acquisition.

Video transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Let's talk about Poshmark. That's a big deal there for Poshmark. We're also watching that stock being purchased by 1-- for $1.2 billion by a company, a Korean-based company I would argue a lot of people have never even heard of before. That is Naver. An interesting deal here. I think it's almost a play. Poshmark, of course, online resale company, and then Naver more of a content focused company.

You put these two together, maybe they will help just be able to drive more sales for a Poshmark. But again, big transaction here. And of course, also interesting timing, Julie, which you flagged in our morning meeting this morning, too-- comes before the holiday season. Interesting to see them make--

JULIE HYMAN: Before the holiday season, after Poshmark shares have collapsed, and then they make this decision to sell, instead of holding out for some kind of recovery in sales, some kind of recovery in the stock price. So, indeed, very interesting here.

And the price at which this happened, $42 was the initial offer price for Poshmark. And you see where it is trading now. And yet, it seems like investors in Naver weren't too happy about this. Shares in Korean trading fell, even as those Poshmark shares are rising on relief that it is getting taken out at this 15%--

BRIAN SOZZI: They're not making money, Poshmark, that's the thing. They're not expected to achieve profitability at the earliest by 2024.

BRAD SMITH: Well, the question is, how is that going to be different underneath a Naver? Naver, for what they have, 28 million monthly users across their Naver Cafe platform, and they've also added in this live broadcast component to also kind of make it more like a micro QVC, if you will. I only say QVC because it's a good Westchester, Pennsylvania brand.

But anyway, all of us have flashbacks to the Home Shopping networks of the world. And now, if you kind of take this to a more grassroots level, as Naver's trying to do and perhaps connecting that with Poshmark's 80 million registered users across 90% of zip codes in the US.

All of that to say at a time where you are going to have a lot of those users that are still looking for other platforms to sell their goods, sell anything that they're not wearing within the household, and just trying to kind of get that on the platform, get that listed, and get some type of income generated from that, it's a question of whether Poshmark still has enough of the net promoter score positivity in order to attract some of those new users and for Naver to be able to benefit from that over the long-term, too.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, if our viewers want to buy my papers right here, just tap it. Just tap the screen. You can buy my papers. No, I'm just--

BRAD SMITH: You can make that into an NFT.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, we probably could. All right, we're going to talk to Poshmark founder and CEO Manish Chandra in the 10 o'clock hour. I look forward to catching up with Manish. Again, he founded this company in 2001. We followed their journey pretty much ever since, especially as a public company. Looking forward to catching up with Manish.