Wemade (a pioneer South Korean recreation developer and writer) introduced on July 12th that its CEO Henry Chang exercised his inventory choices and purchased 223,504 shares for an astonishing USD 2.67 million (KRW 3,5 billion) and didn’t promote a single share. Because of this, Mr. Chang’s stake in Wemade reached 1.5%.
Wemade shifted its focus in direction of metaverse and blockchain expertise with an emphasis on growing and servicing well-made video games with economically significant experiences. Because of this, Wemade developed “Wemix”, a game-centric blockchain platform (with 14 Play & Earn titles), that gives companies together with cryptocurrency pockets, NFT public sale & market, staking, and extra, primarily based on its utility coin WEMIX.
This isn’t the primary time Mr. Chang has proven his dedication to the agency. In truth, he introduced earlier this 12 months his pledge to speculate all his current wage and dividends in WEMIX coin. Wemade introduced on June 24th that Mr. Chang’s buy of 13,424.6 WEMIX cash (price USD 38,125.86) with the wage he acquired from the identical month. This brings his complete funding to 51,258.354 WEMIX cash (price USD 145,573.7). That is additionally the fourth time he invested his wage in WEMIX Coin, along with his dividends from final 12 months.
Mr. Chang has consistently fulfilled his promise to contribute his compensation to the sustainable improvement of Wemix ecosystem. He additionally pressured that he doesn’t plan to promote a single share nor a single WEMIX coin.
CEO compensation packages are a part of company governance mechanisms. Corporations typically supply their CEOs inventory choices that tie CEO’s compensation to the corporate’s inventory efficiency which creates incentives for CEOs to handle the agency and work laborious in ways in which maximize agency market worth.
Usually misunderstood, inventory choices are criticized for inducing high administration to pursue methods that solely push the inventory value up within the brief time period. This is able to profit opportunist CEOs who time the train of their inventory choices to when the inventory value is excessive and promote their newly acquired shares at a premium.
Mr. Chang is likely one of the only a few CEOs in South Korea to put money into his firm’s inventory regardless of very excessive volatility within the capital markets.
Mr. Chang’s transfer is extremely opposite to a couple CEOs who exercised their inventory choices to promote the shares final 12 months, solely six to 12 months after the businesses have been listed.
In distinction, there are sometimes publicized instances the place executives performed huge selloffs of shares acquired from their inventory choices which enraged minority shareholders. The shareholder sentiment is very sturdy when it takes place quickly after the corporate goes public and attracts a misconnection between the shareholders and the leaders. Nevertheless, Mr. Chang’s transfer is precisely the alternative.
Mr. Chang reiterated his engagement within the agency’s long-term success and shareholder worth. His dedication and laborious work led Wemade to new heights. Just lately the corporate introduced USD 131 million in gross sales income for the primary quarter of 2022 alone. This represents an astonishing 72% enhance in comparison with final 12 months. MIR4, Wemade’s flagship P&E MMORPG (from the Legend of Mir collection) gathered 6.5 million lively customers inside a number of months of its international launch in 12 languages and 170 international locations. Its successor MIR M topped Google Play’s recognition chart after its launch in South Korea in June 2022. The extremely anticipated international P&E model might be launched inside the 12 months.
Since Mr. Chang’s dedication has no restrict, Wemade is anticipated to proceed its successful strike with extra achievements in each its online game improvement and publishing companies and its blockchain ecosystem.