KOSDAQ expects another boom year for initial public offerings in 2016, with over 150 companies preparing to float their shares on the country‘s secondary stock market, the bourse’s operator said Friday.

“We expect 154 IPOs this year,” Kim Jae-joon, chairman of Korea Exchange’s KOSDAQ market committee, told a press conference in Seoul.

KOSDAQ is also working to attract Samsung Biologics, a unit of Samsung Group said to be preparing for an IPO in the first half of this year on the U.S.’ Nasdaq or elsewhere, Kim added.

The Korean equivalent to Nasdaq, the KOSDAQ bourse saw a whopping 77 percent increase in IPOs last year. A total of 122 companies debuted on the tech-loaded bourse, raising 2.1 trillion won ($1.75 billion).

By Lee Sun-young (milaya@heraldcorp.com)