HYBE posted annual sales about 18% higher than the previous year, marking the highest level since then. A "multi-home, multi-genre" strategy targeting the global market and strong growth in concert institutional sector sales drove the expansion in size. Operating profit decreased year on year as preemptive investments for medium- to long-term growth and expense related to restructuring the revenue structure were reflected.
HYBE's 2025 consolidation sales totaled 2.6499 trillion won, with the performance of the concert institutional sector driving the growth in results. HYBE successfully held a total of 279 global concerts last year (250 concerts and 29 fan meetings), resulting in concert institutional sector sales of 763.9 billion won, about a 69% increase year on year.
Building on these box office results, HYBE rose five places year on year to rank fourth globally in the "top promoter" institutional sector of Billboard's 2025 boxscore annual report, entering the "big four." Of the four K-pop artists that entered Billboard's "2025 top tour" institutional sector, three (J-Hope, SEVENTEEN, ENHYPEN) were counted as HYBE music group artists, reaffirming the company's solid IP (intellectual property) power.
In 2025 HYBE maintained solid influence in the record market despite overall market adjustments. Annual cumulative sales on the Circle Chart totaled about 19.6 million units, with a market share of about 30%. HYBE music group artists recorded a total of 3.7 billion annual streams, and their share on the "global Spotify 200" was 3%. In 2025, music recordings accounted for about 37% of HYBE's total record-origin revenue.
Global superfan platform Weverse achieved an annual turnaround to profit through restructuring its revenue model and improving operational efficiency. Expanded artist onboarding, advanced e-commerce operations and digital business expansion that diversified revenue contributed to the improved results. This year, results are expected to improve further with the resumption of BTS team activities and growth in e-commerce and digital businesses.
On a consolidation basis for 2025, operating profit was 49.9 billion won, down about 73% year on year. The decline in operating profit was influenced by initial investment expenses for new artist debuts and one-time costs during the business restructuring process.
First, initial expenses were concentrated as a number of artists debuted, including aoen in Japan, CORTIS in Korea and SANTOS BRAVOS in Latin America. They are growing into key IPs in their respective regions. Aoen topped the Oricon daily chart with their debut single "The Blue Sun," CORTIS recorded a million-seller in its debut year, and the 10,000-seat debut concert of SANTOS BRAVOS sold out, with 70,000 people watching the stage online.
One-time costs from streamlining business operations were also reflected. HYBE is reorganizing its business structure in North America to mitigate volatility of the existing management-centered structure and shift to a label-centered IP business model. In line with the changed business structure, a conservative reexamination of asset valuation led to recognition of impairment losses of about 200 billion won for management institutional sector businesses in the fourth quarter last year as nonoperating loss. This is an accounting loss with no actual cash outflow. The move was taken to improve accounting transparency and predictability, and considering the strengthened fundamentals of HYBE America, the risk of additional large-scale write-downs appears limited. HYBE expects these preemptive restructuring effects to translate into significant profitability gains starting this year.
The impact of HYBE's label-centered business model in the global market has been proven by the case of KATSEYE. As of the fourth quarter last year, KATSEYE surpassed 36 million monthly listeners on Spotify, the highest figure among girl groups worldwide. In particular, the title track "Gabriela" has charted on the Billboard Hot 100 for 28 consecutive weeks and is enjoying long-term success; recently the group achieved the feat of placing two songs inside the top 30 simultaneously. It is the first girl group to do so since Destiny's Child. Their first solo tour, "The BEAUTIFUL CHAOS Tour," sold out all dates, and the per-audience purchase amount for tour merchandise exceeded that of existing pop artists.
This year HYBE plans to further expand its influence in the global music market. First, BTS will release its fifth full-length album, ARIRANG, on Mar. 20. The full-group album, the first in about four years, will lead to the largest world tour in HYBE's history, bringing together the company's global operational capabilities. Currently the tour has been confirmed as the largest ever for a single K-pop artist tour, with 34 cities worldwide and 82 performances, and additional dates in Japan and the Middle East will be announced later.
A new girl group will debut domestically this year, and in the North American market HYBE plans to showcase a follow-up global girl group that inherits KATSEYE's formula for success. A local boy group project is also ramping up toward debut through collaboration with multi-platinum producer Ryan Tedder, a four-time Grammy Award winner. At the same time, the Alan's Universe project, which has 100 million YouTube subscribers, will introduce innovative IP that combines storytelling and music. HYBE also plans to launch projects optimized for local culture in the Indian market.
HYBE unveiled a new shareholder return policy covering the next three years to enhance shareholder value. It will introduce the "minimum dividend system," guaranteeing a minimum dividend of 500 won per share, the first K-content company to do so. The dividend benchmark will also shift from net income to consolidated free cash flow (FCF), which reflects real cash-generating ability. The change aims to reduce volatility from noncash gains and losses and make dividend-size forecasting easier. Applying this standard, HYBE plans to use up to 30% of free cash flow as returnable funds from 2025 through 2027.
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