NHN Corporation, the operator of South Korea`s leading internet search engine Naver, reported on October 29 that its earnings in the third quarter of 2009 reached 333.2 billion won ($277.60 million) in sales and 132.9 billion won ($110.72 million) in operating profits.
Sales and operating profits rose by 13.7 percent and 19.3 percent, respectively, in comparison to the pre-spinoff figures of NHN Business Platform in the same period of last year. Compared with the previous quarter, the operator still managed to boost sales and operating sales by 0.8 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.
Given the third quarter normally suffers from declining demand for ad spaces and game, NHN’s latest earnings illustrate consumers’ growing expectation for an economic recovery.
In terms of ad spaces in the search engine, the rise in advertisers and the unit cost of advertisement drove sales to 173.6 billion won with a year-on-year increase of 9.6 percent and 4.6 percent compared with the previous quarter.
Sales of display ads also rose by 9.9 percent to stand at 50.4 billion won year-on-year.
Sales of game also soared by 23.3 percent to reach 106.6 billion won, but declined by 4.0 percent compared with the previous quarter. The fall in sales can be blamed on declining sales from NHN’s popular games such as Gostop (a Korean version of poker game) and poker as the company promotes the so-called ‘green game campaign’ to prevent speculative games.
NHN’s sales (consolidated) including that of its subsidiaries slightly increased to 375.7 billion won compared with the previous quarter with an operating profit of 141.2 billion won.
“A rapid economic recovery has bolstered earnings in search engines and an upward growth trend is to remain intact buoyed by the coming high season in the fourth quarter,” said CEO Kim Sang-hun of NHN.
[written by Gwang-Choi- Yen-mi Hong/ edited by Jae-yoon Jung]
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