Naver's quarterly sales exceed W1 tril.

By Yoon Sung-won

Naver posted 1.01 trillion won ($885.8 million) in sales in the third quarter, the tech company said Thursday, up 20.5 percent year-on-year, breaking the 1 trillion won mark for the first time.

The nation’s top internet portal service provider said the record-breaking performance was led by its Japan-based mobile service subsidiary LINE Corp., which boosted the company’s overseas and mobile businesses.

In its regulatory filing on Thursday, Naver said its operating profit reached 282.3 billion won, jumping 27.6 percent from a year ago. Net profit was 198 billion won, up 69.5 percent from last year’s 116.8 billion won. The company posted 840 billion won in sales and 221.3 billion won in operating profit, respectively, in the third quarter last year.

The company pledged to further boost its presence globally through new products, including its video-based social networking service Snow and personal broadcasting service V that features celebrities and webcomic content, as well as through new technology sectors such as robotics and the voice-recognizing artificial intelligence (AI) engine AMICA.

“The company continued to expand its sales in the third quarter on its efforts to extend its content and strengthen its mobile platform business,” Naver CEO Kim Sang-hun said. “Naver will continue to invest in technology, expand cooperation with diverse partners and increase employment domestically and abroad to boost technological competitiveness on the global level.”

The company said overseas sales reached 370.7 billion won, up 24.7 percent from a year ago. This accounted for 37 percent of the company’s total sales.

Naver said it has generated 749.5 billion won in sales from its advertising business, which is 74 percent of its total sales. In particular, its ad sales from overseas grew by 72 percent year-on-year.

Sales from mobile platforms stood at 650.2 billion won, which is 64 percent of its total sales.

During a conference call, Thursday, Kim underlined the company’s focus on expanding its provision of visual content and solidifying its open-platform operations. The company said its instant online payment service Naver Pay has drawn 21 million users as of September and 25 percent of them are active users, contributing to boosting the service’s sales growth.

Meanwhile, the company announced earlier that Han Seung-sook, who heads its service business department, will replace Kim as CEO after next March.

“The reshuffle is a generation shift,” Kim said. “Led by a next-generation leader who has worked to build our service firsthand, the company can successfully respond to the rapid pace of competition and changes in services.”

Han said, “I am working with Kim and other executives to discuss how to run Naver in the future.”