NHN Corp., South Korea's biggest Internet portal operator, said Thursday that its second quarter net profit fell 4.37 percent from a year earlier due mainly to higher costs.
Net income came to 114 billion won ($105 million) in the April-June period, compared with 119 billion won a year ago, the company said in a regulatory filing.
Sales rose 20.16 percent on-year to 524.5 billion won over the cited period, and operating profit dropped 1.08 percent to 151.6 billion won.
The operator of the Naver search engine said that the bottom line drop is attributable to an increase in advertising and labor costs.
Naver is a Web portal with a vast array of content including email service, news, online shopping, games, blogs, entertainment and stocks.
NHN said revenue from keyword advertising soared 32 percent from a year earlier and display advertising sales for presenting ads on Naver.com also went up 15.3 percent.
But sales in the game sector fell 0.7 percent on seasonal factors.
"We've managed to grow on the back of growing Naver's key services including the social network service amid the rapidly changing mobile environment," said NHN. "We will focus more on mobile services." (Yonhap)