Coupang (CPNG) after the data breach: down 58% in a year while Korean stocks doubled

Coupang closed at $13.78 on October 2, 2026, three cents above its twelve-month low of $13.75 (September 28) and 57.7% lower than a year earlier. Over the same twelve months the Korean stock market (KOSPI) rose 97.3% in won and the S&P 500 15.0%. The stock is 60.6% below its 2021 IPO price of $35 and has not closed above it since August 11, 2021. At the October 2 price, its class A and class B shares were worth $24.8 billion, about 0.7 times revenue of the last twelve months ($35.5 billion). By October 9 it had recovered to $15.82.

The breach, the vouchers and the fines

On November 18, 2025, Coupang found that a former employee, using a stolen internal security key, had accessed basic data — name, phone number, address and email — from about 33 million accounts. The company says no payment data or passwords were accessed, and that after its investigation the person kept data from only about 3,000 accounts and deleted it. The head of the Korean subsidiary resigned on December 10, 2025. Coupang then issued compensation vouchers worth 1.685 trillion won (about $1.2 billion) — 50,000 won for each of 33.7 million accounts — which reduce revenue as they are used; they were used mostly in the first quarter of 2026, and use ended in mid-April. The company does not say how much came off each quarter.

On June 10, 2026, Korea’s privacy regulator imposed about $410 million of fines: about $278 million for the breach and about $132 million for a separate case involving data collected in an advertising program. Coupang says it will appeal. The fines are not tax-deductible and were booked entirely in the second quarter.

Almost all of Coupang’s sales are in won, so the dollar figures depend on the exchange rate: in the second quarter, revenue grew 3.9% in dollars and 10% excluding currency. The second-quarter loss of $570 million would have been $160 million without the fines, by the company’s own figure; the first quarter lost $266 million with no fines at all. In 2025 as a whole, revenue was $34.5 billion (+14.1% in dollars, +18% excluding currency) and profit $208 million, a 0.6% margin. Since 2019, the company has been profitable only in 2023, 2024 and 2025, always with margins below 6%, and 2023’s $1.36 billion profit included a $905 million tax benefit.

A fire hit its Incheon distribution center in July 2026 — not to be confused with the 2021 fire at Deokpyeong — with about $246 million of inventory and assets on site; the losses will be recorded from the third quarter, and the company says the fire did not materially affect third-quarter revenue. The biggest one-day drop, −13.8% on May 6, came the session after first-quarter results were filed after the close; other large drops, such as −13.7% on February 5 and the slide of 13.6% in September, came with no company filing.

Funds are split

Thirteen of the 38 managers held Coupang at the end of June, with 185.3 million shares between them, down from 208.7 million in March and 286.8 million at the peak in late 2023. The largest holder, Baillie Gifford, has held it in every 13F since the IPO; it peaked at 171.4 million shares in mid-2024 and has cut in each of the last four quarters, to 78.7 million (−54%). Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global went the other way: it sold out in early 2022, came back in the third quarter of 2024 and has added in all seven quarters since, from 2.0 million to 36.5 million shares. Steve Cohen’s Point72 nearly tripled its stake. For David Abrams it is the largest weight among the 13, 4.13% of his portfolio, unchanged since 2023. The Gates Foundation Trust, whose portfolio is managed by Cascade rather than by Bill Gates personally, has held 9.25 million shares since late 2022. Values are at the June 30 price; by October 2 they were 20.7% lower.

Insiders and buybacks

The only open-market purchase in the twelve months to early October was by funds of Greenoaks, the firm where board member Neil Mehta is managing partner: 7.35 million shares for $136.6 million on March 11–13, 2026, at an average of $18.58. The Form 4 says the shares belong to the funds, so this is a fund’s money, not a director’s own; at the October 2 price the shares were worth 25.8% less. Insiders made five sales worth $5.8 million, all to pay taxes on vesting shares. Founder and chief executive Bom Kim, who owns all the class B shares — 29 votes each, 74.1% of the votes at the end of 2025 — neither bought nor sold. The company itself repurchased 43.7 million shares for $850 million in the first half of 2026, at about $19.45, and had $907 million of authorization left on June 30.

One more name in the filings: Kevin Warsh, now chair of the Federal Reserve, was a Coupang director until the Senate confirmed him on May 13, 2026. Afterwards he filed two notices of proposed sale (Form 144) for 459,102 shares, about $7.25 million at the prices in the notices; as a former director he does not file Form 4s, so these are notices, not confirmed sales, and the filings do not say why. Daily data is on the Coupang page. Not investment advice.