[At the Crossroads] Opticore ② Suspected of Lending 4 Billion KRW to a Paper Company with Poor Collateral

A Large Loan Extended to a 100,000 KRW Capital Company...
Borrower Turns Out to Be an Affiliate of the CB Purchaser
Collateralized Bonds Issued by a Company Suffering Capital Impairment and Capital Reduction

It has been confirmed that Opticore, a KOSDAQ-listed company, lent 4 billion KRW to a paper company whose actual operations are difficult to verify. Controversy is expected, as the loan was secured with bonds from a company with a poor financial structure. Furthermore, it was discovered that an affiliate of the borrower later purchased convertible bonds (CB) from Opticore.

According to the Financial Supervisory Service’s electronic disclosure system on January 23, Opticore lent 4 billion KRW to a corporation named Wellquest in the third quarter of last year. This amount represents 13.4% of Opticore’s equity capital, a significant sum.

Wellquest was established in August 2024 with a capital of 100,000 KRW. Its business purpose is investment in stocks and real estate, making it effectively a paper company.

When Opticore lent money to Wellquest, it secured 3 billion KRW worth of CBs issued by a company called Autumn as collateral. Opticore also disclosed that it received a joint guarantee from Wellquest’s largest shareholder.

Autumn’s financial condition is extremely poor. Autumn is a manufacturer and seller of X-ray products. Its largest shareholder is Donggu Biopharmaceuticals, another KOSDAQ-listed company. As of the end of the third quarter last year, Autumn’s total equity was 2.8 billion KRW, which is lower than its capital stock of 10.4 billion KRW, indicating a capital impairment. As a result, Autumn carried out a 10-to-1 capital reduction without compensation in November last year.

Its performance is also weak. In 2024, Autumn’s revenue was 2.7 billion KRW, with an operating loss of 10.1 billion KRW. As of the third quarter of last year, it had recorded revenue of 1 billion KRW and an operating loss of 2.9 billion KRW. Consequently, Donggu Biopharmaceuticals has fully impaired its investment in Autumn and values the book value at zero.

The CBs from Autumn that Opticore accepted as collateral were issued in May 2022 with a three-year maturity. The maturity date was May of last year, but the CBs were neither converted into shares nor redeemed, and the maturity was extended. Due to Autumn’s poor financial structure, repayment was impossible, and even conversion would not yield any profit, so the extension was unavoidable.

Opticore accepted these CBs as collateral. In addition, the largest shareholder of Wellquest, who provided the joint guarantee, is also in a weak financial position. According to disclosures, Wellquest’s 100% largest shareholder is a private equity fund called JK Withers. As of 2024, its total equity is around 1.2 billion KRW.

After Wellquest borrowed 4 billion KRW from Opticore, an affiliate of Wellquest later acquired Opticore’s CBs. On December 24 of last year, Opticore disclosed that it would sell CBs with a face value of 5 billion KRW for 5.03 billion KRW to “Alpenroute Blind Paradigm Private Investment Trust No. 1.”

The fund manager is Alpenroute Asset Management. Alpenroute Asset Management was referred to as the “second Lime scandal” after suspending fund redemptions in 2020. In 2024, its largest shareholder changed to JK Withers. Thus, Wellquest, JK Withers, and Alpenroute Asset Management are all affiliated companies.

The conversion price of the Opticore CBs acquired by these entities is 1,566 KRW per share. Currently, Opticore’s stock price is trading around 4,300 KRW, meaning they have gained an unrealized profit of more than 170% in just one month.

Regarding this, an Opticore official stated, “Autumn is a company with excellent AI imaging diagnostic technology and is the only company in Korea to have received Class 3 approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety in the imaging diagnostics field. The CB purchaser is a fund managed by Alpenroute Asset Management, and by law, we cannot know the trustee and beneficiary, nor do we have any knowledge of the fund’s management structure.”