This photo provided by Kakao Corp. shows its Pangyo office in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province.
SEOUL, Aug. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — Kakao Corp., the operator of South Korea’s top mobile messenger KakaoTalk, said Thursday its second-quarter net profit fell 68 percent from a year earlier due to a base effect.
Kakao logged a net profit of 101.2 billion won (US$77.2 million) on a consolidated basis in the three months ending in June, compared with 315.9 billion a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.
Operating profit rose 5.2 percent on-year to 171 billion won, and sales climbed 34.8 percent to 1.82 trillion won.
The earnings failed to meet market expectations. The average estimate of net profit by analysts stood at 145 billion won, according to a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency.
The company said the on-year net profit decline is attributable to a base effect stemming from last year’s valuation hike of Dunamu, the operator of Upbit, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, in which Kakao was an early investor.
Kakao said it logged 930.7 billion won in sales from its platform business, which includes its e-commerce platform Talk Biz, up 16 percent from a year ago.
Sales from the company’s content business, including Kakao Games, digital comics, music and others, also grew 51 percent on-year to 891.7 billion won.
Its “story” business, which refers to entertainment content, saw a 22 percent growth to 227.6 billion won, while sales of its games business soared 162 percent to 336.8 billion won.
Kakao said it was “preparing a new growth engines by promoting strong bonds with businesses, such as advertising and commerce, along with the evolution of Kakao Talk.”
(Yonhap)
