Naver’s Q3 operating profit tops $284 mn, up 15% yoy

[Photo by Park Hyung-ki]

South Korean platform giant Naver Corp. announced Friday that the preliminary estimates of its operating profit for the third quarter this year came to 380.2 billion won ($284.86 million), up 15.1 percent from a year ago.

Sales were 2.45 trillion won and net profit 356.2 billion won, up 18.9 percent and 53.8 percent respectively, during the same period.

By business segment, the company’s sales were 898.5 billion won for its search platform, 647.4 billion won for commerce, 340.8 billion won for fintech, 434.9 billion won for content, and 123.6 billion won for its cloud plaform.

The search platform business saw a 0.3 percent increase in sales from the third quarter last year. Sales of search advertising, in the meantime, gained 3.5 percent on the back of platform enhancement efforts.

Commerce sales rose 41.3 percent from a year earlier, with those of brokerage and trade more than doubling with the transaction volume growth from brand stores, travel, and limited-edition trading platform KREAM, a Naver subsidiary, as well as the impact of acquiring Poshmark, Inc.

Fintech sales also increased 15.1 percent from the third quarter of 2022. The payment value at Naver Pay rose 22.5 percent to 15.2 trillion won, with external payments growing by 45.8 percent. Offline payments doubled to 1.7 trillion won, driven by the introduction of Samsung Pay’s Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) and growth in booking and order payments.

Sales of the content business were up 39.5 percent from a year ago, and the combined transaction value of the global webtoon business climbed 5 percent to 479.4 billion won over the same period. Snow Corp.’s sales grew 36.1 percent with the success of new products such as artificial intelligence (AI) profiles.

Cloud sales gained 30.3 percent from the third quarter last year. Business-to-business (B2B) sales were up 19.9 percent with criteria changes in sales recognition for Naver Cloud Platform (NCP) and the expansion of paid IDs for Line Works.

“In the third quarter, we unveiled a lineup of generative AI services and a monetization roadmap to guide our future AI business,” Naver chief executive officer Choi Soo-yeon said. “We are laying the groundwork for continued growth in each area and will accelerate our new global attempts taking advantage of not just our services but our accumulated technology as well.”