This undated image, provided by NCSOFT Corp., shows its R&D center in south of Seoul.
SEOUL, May 14 (Korea Bizwire) — NCSOFT Corp., a major South Korean online and mobile game developer, said Friday its first quarter net income more than doubled from a year earlier, led by strong sales from the latest entry of its popular “Lineage” franchise.
It logged a net profit of 168.3 billion won (US$130.6 million) on a consolidated basis in the three months ending in March, compared with 80.2 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.
For the quarter, NCSOFT posted an operating profit of 244.2 billion won, a sharp surge from an operating income of 56.7 billion won a year ago. Sales rose 54.2 percent to 790.3 billion won over the cited period.
The earnings beat market expectations. The average estimate of net profit by analysts stood at 162.8 billion won, according to the survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency.
The company attributed strong sales to the popularity of “Lineage W,” the latest in its long-running popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game franchise, with sales from the title reaching 373.2 billion won, or 58.2 percent of combined sales from all of the company’s game products.
“Lineage 2M” and “Lineage M” also generated sales of 127.3 billion won and 115.8 billion won, respectively.
South Korea accounted for 63.7 percent of the company’s overall sales, followed by Asia with 26.7 percent, and North America and Europe combined with 4.7 percent.
NCSOFT plans to release its new PC and console-based title “Throne and Liberty” in the second half of 2022 and is also preparing to release “Lineage W” in North America and Europe, and also “Blade & Soul 2″ in Japan and Taiwan in the near future.
(Yonhap)
