Kakao flies on another best quarterly earnings led by contents wealth

[Photo provided by Kakao Corp.]

Korean mobile platform giant Kakao Corp. went on with a hot earning streak as its rich contents thrived on the dominant chat platform.

Kakao registered 162.2 billion won ($142.4 million) in operating income for the second quarter ended June 30, according to its regulatory filing on Friday. The result, a new quarterly high, is up 3.2 percent against the previous quarter and 66.3 percent against a year earlier.

Revenue rose 7.5 percent on quarter and 41.9 percent on year to a new record of 1.35 trillion won. Its bottom line also surged 31.7 percent from the previous quarter and more than doubled from the previous year to 315.9 billion won.

Its shares closed Friday down 2.35 percent at 145,500 won on profit-taking.

Kakao enjoyed another strong quarter in the April-June period thanks to solid gains across the board, especially on ad revenue linked to its messenger app KakaoTalk. Its content business such as webtoon and entertainment IP sales abroad also made a solid gain.

The overall platform business delivered 761.8 billion won in revenue, up 10 percent on quarter and 47 percent on year.

Talk Biz, operating mobile services through Kakao Talk messaging app, generated 390.5 billion won, up 5 percent on quarter and 52 percent on year, thanks to the record high advertisement sales. The company sells ad spaces through Biz Board and Channel tools integrated into Kakao Talk, a mobile messenger that almost all Koreans use.

Portal Biz¡¯s sales rose 7 percent on quarter and on year to 125.1 billion won.

Revenue from other platform services totaled 246.2 billion won, up 73 percent on year and 20 percent on quarter. The company said demand for Kakao Mobility¡¯s premium taxi-hailing service was strong. Kakao Pay, a mobile payment service, also performed well in a jump in transaction amount on service expansion.

[Source: Kakao Entertainment]

Content division raked in 590.4 billion won in the second-quarter revenue, up 5 percent on quarter and 35 percent on year.

Web cartoon and novel services contributed 186.4 billion won, up 7 percent on quarter and 57 percent on year, on the back of robust growth of Piccoma, a comic app run by Kakao Japan, and Kakao Entertainment¡¯s content creation and distribution business.

Media services, such as movie production and management, saw revenue jump 20 percent on quarter and a whopping 112 percent on year to 87.4 billion won.

Music business revenue came at 188.1 billion won, up 2 percent on quarter and 11 percent on year. Game business delivered 128.6 billion won, down 1 percent on quarter but up 20 percent on year.

Kakao said its operating expense expanded 8 percent on quarter and 39 percent on year to 1.2 trillion won, partly due to a rise in payroll and big marketing campaigns.

Yet, the company managed to report 12 percent in operating margin in the second quarter.

[¨Ï Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]