NHN records on-year profits in Q1

NHN's Play Museum in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province (NHN)

South Korean information technology company NHN Corp. on Thursday said its first-quarter operating profit rose 23.1 percent on-year to 19.1 billion won ($14.5 million) mainly owing to steady growth in the revenue of its gaming and payment services.

Net income came to 25.6 billion won ($19.3 million), turning from a loss of 4.5 billion won during the first quarter of 2022, according to the company’s regulatory filing.

Meanwhile, total sales increased 5.4 percent on-year to 548.3 billion won ($414 million).

"Our first quarter performance yielded noticeable improvements in our profits and losses as well as continuous growth,” the company’s CEO, Chung Ujin, said.

In particular, NHN’s gaming division enjoyed a busy Lunar New Year holiday and an uptick in mobile web board game sales. Sales reached 117 billion won -- an on-year 7.6 percent rise.

Payment services and advertising marked 249.4 billion won in sales, up 19.2 percent from the previous year. This boost was attributed to an increase in offline payments and coupon revenue on NHN’s popular convenient payment app, Payco. The app’s total transaction volume during the first quarter alone was worth a whopping 2.7 trillion won.

However, the company also reported some losses -- its commerce sector dipped 51.7 percent on-year to 50.6 billion won due to China’s falling consumer sentiment and the shrinking US retail market.

To maintain growth, NHN plans to introduce unique gaming content, focus on core businesses such as cloud services and artificial intelligence, and improve its environmental, social and corporate governance management.

“We will establish a stable governance structure through ESG management and improve our corporate value,” Chung added.

By Yu Ji-soo(jisooyu123@heraldcorp.com)