Korea Investment & Securities said on the 10th that beginning in the first quarter next year, new releases will start for NHN, boosting profits at its game division. It maintained its "Buy" investment opinion and raised the target price to 40,000 won from 35,000 won. NHN closed the previous trading day at 30,650 won.
Jeong Ho-yoon, an analyst at Korea Investment & Securities, forecast NHN's 2026 revenue at 2.888 trillion won and operating profit at 153 billion won. That would be up 15.7% and 47.6%, respectively, from a year earlier.
Jeong said, "The stock, which had been weak in the first half of 2025, succeeded in rebounding around the summer," and analyzed, "Expanded artificial intelligence (AI) investment at the government level and the accelerated cloud transition of public institutions created a favorable environment for NHN's cloud division, which was the main reason for this year's share price rise and valuation recovery."
NHN Cloud was finally selected in July as the largest build-out operator in the "GPU procurement, build-out and operation support project" led by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), securing 7,600 GPUs in the government's project to build 13,000 GPUs.
Next year, it expected a rebound in the game division. Jeong said, "Starting in 2026, it is also worth expecting a rebound in the game division, which has long lacked results," and analyzed, "Final Fantasy, scheduled for release in the first half next year, is an intellectual property (IP) popular not only in Japan but across the West and Asia, so it can be expected to perform at a meaningful hit level."
He added, "Because the performance of new titles in the game division can immediately lead to improved earnings, if a new title becomes a hit, 2026 is likely to be a year when earnings growth and share price gains can be expected at the same time."