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SEOUL, Nov. 3 (Yonhap) — Naver Corp., South Korea’s leading web portal provider, declared Friday that its third-quarter net profit rose 53.8 percent year-on-year, thanks to its thriving commerce, content, and cloud businesses.
Net profit for the three-month period ending September 30th totaled 356.2 billion won (US$265.2 million), compared to 231.6 billion won the same quarter last year, Naver reported in a filing to the regulatory body.
Operating profit was 380.2 billion won, a 15.1 percent increase from the previous year, and sales grew 18.9 percent to 2.44 trillion won.
The results exceeded market expectations, with analysts polled by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency, predicting a net profit of 286.2 billion won.
This file photo shows Naver Corp.’s headquarters in Seongnam, just southeast of Seoul. (Yonhap)
Naver attributed the strong earnings to the remarkable growth of its commerce, content, and cloud divisions.
Commerce sales skyrocketed 41.3 percent year-on-year to 647.4 billion won, due to strong sales from Brandstore, Travel, and Kream. Content sales rose 39.5 percent to 434.9 billion won, spurred by the expansion of its global webtoon business, increased sales on Snow, a camera application with photographic filters, and Zepeto, its metaverse platform.
The cloud unit saw a 30.3 percent increase in sales to 123.6 billion won, as demand for whalebook, a cloud-optimized laptop for educational use, and B2B performance grew.
Naver’s flagship search platform saw a 0.3 percent rise in sales to 898.5 billion won from the same period last year, and its fintech sales went up 15.1 percent to 340.8 billion won.
“In the third quarter, we presented our artificial intelligence business direction by launching the generative AI service line-up and the profitization road map,” Naver’s CEO Choi Soo-yeon said. “Additionally, Naver will speed up its global expansion utilizing its services and accumulated technological capacity,” Choi added, citing its digital twin city project for Saudi Arabia.
Last month, Naver announced it had signed an agreement with the Saudi Arabian government to create a digital twin platform for the country’s capital Riyadh and four other cities.
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