NHN(181710) is surging for a second day on the back of record-high results in the second quarter. The securities industry is also raising target prices to reflect improved earnings and cloud growth potential.
At 9:35 a.m. on the 12th, NHN was trading at 60,800 won, up 6,600 won (12.18%) from the previous session. During the session it rose to 62,500 won, nearing a 52-week high. NHN also finished the previous day at 54,200 won, up the price-limit 29.82% after announcing strong second-quarter results.
NHN posted consolidated revenue of 757.9 billion won and operating profit of 57.9 billion won in the second quarter this year. Those were up 25.3% and 164.1%, respectively, from a year earlier, with both revenue and operating profit hitting record highs on a quarterly basis. Balanced growth in games, payments, and cloud drove the improvement.
The securities industry also said NHN's earnings capacity has changed. Meritz Securities raised NHN's target price by 18.5% to 64,000 won from 54,000 won.
Lee Hyo-jin, a Meritz Securities analyst, said, "Growth in game and especially cloud revenue far exceeded expectations and produced a surprise," and noted, "The second quarter this year was a period when all three core divisions—games, cloud, and payments—were profitable."
In particular, the center of future growth was projected to be cloud. With the Yangpyeong data center coming online for the first time in the second quarter this year, NHN's cloud revenue came to 100 billion won. Meritz Securities estimated the maximum annual revenue based on current installed capacity at over 500 billion won. It said that if the 30-megawatt (MW) facility to be added at the end of 2027 is configured as GPU as a service (GPUaaS), related revenue could increase to 1 trillion won.
Subsidiary NHN KCP also recorded second-quarter revenue of 383.4 billion won and operating profit of 15.4 billion won, up 28% and 25%, respectively, from a year earlier.