LINE launched in Japan in June 2011, three months after the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. The free chat app spread fast, carried by cartoon stickers of a bear named Brown and a rabbit named Cony. By March 2016 it had 218 million monthly users, most of them in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. That summer the Tokyo company listed in New York and Tokyo in the same week.

A Korean Parent in Tokyo

The company began as the Japanese arm of NHN, the Korean firm behind the search engine Naver, which ran online games in Japan. LINE grew from that team. The bet was that a messaging app could become the front door to a whole phone life. LINE sold stickers, games, music and payments inside the app. Japan still produced most of its revenue, and Naver kept control of the company after the offering.

Two Bells, One Week

LINE priced its global offering at $32.84 per American share and ¥3,300 per share in Japan in July 2016, one of the year's largest tech IPOs. It traded on the New York Stock Exchange as LN. Growth outside its four core markets proved hard. In 2020 Naver and SoftBank bought out the public shareholders and delisted the stock. LINE then merged with Yahoo Japan's parent, now called LY Corporation.

Cover: Mississippi Bear, Antoine Louis Barye. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a bear (LINE's mascot Brown).