The 2024 Streamer Awards is held at Seoul Sangam SOOP Coliseum. /Courtesy of News1

Hana Securities analyzed that on the 15th, SOOP (formerly AfricastarTV) is expected to record results that fall below both the consensus and estimates due to a slowdown in the growth of 'star balloons'. Therefore, the investment opinion remains 'buy', but the target price has been downgraded by 15% from 150,000 won to 130,000 won. The previous day's closing price of SOOP was 92,800 won.

Hana Securities projected that SOOP's consolidated operating revenue for the 4th quarter of last year would be 117.4 billion won and the operating profit would be 28 billion won. The estimated revenue from platform services is 82.5 billion won, and the revenue from 'star balloons' is estimated at 79.8 billion won. Although revenue from 'star balloons' grew by 20.7% compared to the same period last year, it decreased by 0.3% compared to the previous quarter.

Lee Jun-ho, a Research Institute member at Hana Securities, noted, "Although there was growth in content-type advertising due to outsourcing revenue related to G-Star in the 4th quarter, the contribution to operating profit is not expected to be significant as production costs accompany it." He explained, "In November last year, the introduction of P2P was completed for global SOOP, but it will take time to reach the level of sophistication of domestic SOOP."

He also predicted, "Although there was a successful recruitment of a number of Valorant and virtual streamers in the 3rd quarter, there was no significant movement in the 4th quarter," adding, "The fact that streamer migration to platforms might be actively carried out in the 1st quarter of 2025, marking one year since the official withdrawal from Twitch, is a positive factor."

Hana Securities forecasts that SOOP will record consolidated operating revenue of 455.3 billion won and operating profit of 124.8 billion won this year. This researcher anticipates, "To penetrate global SOOP this year, we plan to double the content production budget, expecting resource input for platform sophistication and marketing execution," adding, "Global SOOP is currently conducting simultaneous broadcasts of the T1 League of Legends team, but meaningful traffic has not been confirmed."

He emphasized, "In the past two years, the factors for the rise in SOOP's stock price were traffic acquisition due to the withdrawal from Twitch and the sharp growth of 'star balloons' until July last year, which led to an increase in earnings per share (EPS). This year, the multiple is more important than EPS, and if meaningful traffic is secured in global SOOP, it is expected to rerate from the current 10 times and the stock price will rise."