Kakao’s Q1 OP nearly doubles from previous year on differentiated services

[Photo by Kim Ho-young]

South Korean platform giant Kakao Corp. posted strong results in the first quarter, achieving a record quarterly revenue and nearly doubling its operating profit from a year earlier.

According to the company on Thursday, Kakao posted an operating profit of 120.3 billion won ($88.1 million) in the first quarter, up 92.2 percent from a year earlier. During the same period, revenue rose 22.5 percent to 1.99 trillion won.

The company’s platform and content businesses recorded revenues of 954.8 billion won and 1.03 trillion won, respectively, representing year-on-year increases of 12.6 percent and 33.3 percent, respectively.

Within the platform division, the Talk Biz segment, which refers to all business services provided through the Kakao Talk text messaging application, posted revenues of 522.1 billion won, up 7.7 percent from the same period last year.

“We have achieved solid growth with our active response to the marketing expansion of Chinese e-commerce platforms, enabling us to report solid growth while securing budgets,” said Kakao Chief Executive Officer Chung Shin-a.

Other platform businesses raised 348 billion won in sales, up 24.3 percent during the cited period, on the back of steady growth of the entire Kakao Mobility Corp. business division and the increase in overseas and offline payment transactions at Kakaopay Corp.

In addition, Kakao’s content business revenue increased 101.8 percent to 468.2 billion won due to the acquisition of SM Entertainment Co. last year and its artists such as IU and IVE.

However, its story business recorded a revenue of 227 billion won, down 0.7 percent from the same period last year.

Meanwhile, on the same day, Kakao also unveiled its goal to launch AI services by combining Kakao Brain Corp.’s technological capabilities with Kakao’s service strengths, preparing for services such as artificial intelligence-based content subscription and consultation “suitable for the chat context,” according to Chung.