Naver Corp.’s headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. (Image: Naver)
SEOUL, Nov. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s top internet portal operator, Naver Corp., became the country’s fifth most valuable stock on the back of better-than-expected earnings, market watchers said Tuesday.
Naver’s market capitalization stood at 26.61 trillion won (US$23 billion) as of Tuesday, making it the fifth-largest listed company on the country’s main bourse by market capitalization.
Shares closed at 161,500 won, down 1.82 percent from a day earlier.
It follows tech giant Samsung Electronics Co., chipmaker SK Hynix Inc. and the country’s leading carmaker Hyundai Motor Co. It is ahead of bio giants Samsung BioLogics Co. and Celltrion Inc.
The company ranked 10th as of last year in terms of market capitalization and further slipped to 13th as of the end of June this year.
The rise in Naver’s stock price comes as its net profit jumped 24.7 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier due largely to strong revenue growth in its platform and content businesses.
Net profit reached 85.3 billion won in the July-September period, compared with a profit of 68.4 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
Market watchers said Naver’s rise also reflects a global trend in which an increasing number of companies with innovative technology are taking top spots on stock markets.
“Tech firms are already top-listed firms on the U.S. bourse,” Lee Chang-mok, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities, said.
“It is already a global trend that firms with huge investment in intangible things such as music streaming and intellectual property are becoming top-listed firms.”
Naver attributed the increase in net profit and sales to its business’ overall good performance, derived from cutting-edge technology such as artificial intelligence (AI).
Naver said it will beef up efforts to bring more online shoppers onto its shopping platform with AI-based shopping search tools, the company said.
(Yonhap)
