[Click eStock] "WantedLab, Rapid Growth with AI Matching... High Value Appeal"

Korea Investment & Securities Report

[Asia Economy Reporter Minji Lee] Korea Investment & Securities forecasted on the 10th that WantedLab has additional valuation potential compared to similar overseas recruitment platforms.

WantedLab is a recruitment platform company operating the recruitment AI platform Wanted. It learns user data and company data through AI to match candidates, charging a 7% commission on the successful candidate's annual salary when a hire is made through AI matching, and provides a reward of 500,000 KRW each to the referrer and the successful candidate after three months.

Corporate clients can reduce recruitment costs and shorten hiring time through Wanted. Users can receive hiring rewards and view job postings in order of expected acceptance rate rather than advertising fee order, increasing their chances of success. Over the past three years, revenue growth has rapidly increased at an average annual rate of 124%, and the company turned profitable in the first quarter of this year.

WantedLab is growing rapidly by differentiating itself from other advertising-based recruitment platform companies. The key difference from other advertising-based recruitment platforms is that WantedLab possesses data ranging from job posting clicks to acceptance status and post-acceptance retention data.

Researcher Andoyoung Ahn of Korea Investment & Securities said, “There are companies offering AI matching, but they analyze data collected at the time of application such as resumes rather than acceptance status data, and since they are advertising-based, switching to the Wanted model may cause cannibalization of existing advertising revenue,” adding, “Through this clear differentiation, the number of users, corporate clients, and hires are all rapidly increasing.” Seventy percent of hires are in the IT sector, and as developer wages rise, the average recruitment commission is also trending upward.

Compared to recruitment platform companies with similar models to WantedLab, WantedLab has additional valuation potential. In the U.S., ZipRecruiter has a market capitalization of 3.7 trillion KRW, while Japan’s Visional and Atrae have market capitalizations of approximately 3.2 trillion KRW and 690 billion KRW, respectively. Based on Bloomberg’s estimated earnings, their price-to-earnings ratios (PER) are 65x, 142x, and 72x, respectively. WantedLab’s market capitalization is currently around 310 billion KRW, with a PER of about 38x based on this year’s earnings estimates.

Researcher Andoyoung Ahn explained, “The market capitalization is relatively low compared to expected profits,” and added, “Considering margin rates and growth potential, WantedLab could be recognized for greater value.”