Naver set an all-time high for revenue for the fifth straight quarter in the first quarter, helped by applying artificial intelligence (AI) to search, advertising, and shopping. C2C (consumer-to-consumer) businesses also grew, including Poshmark in North America, Soda in Japan, Wallapop in Spain, and Kream in Korea.
Naver disclosed on the 30th that first-quarter revenue on a consolidation basis rose 16.3% from a year earlier to 3.2411 trillion won. Operating profit for the quarter increased 7.2% year over year to 541.8 billion won. Net profit for the period fell 31.3% to 291.0 billion won from a year earlier.
The results matched projections by securities analysts. According to FnGuide, securities analysts forecast Naver's first-quarter revenue at 3.1444 trillion won and operating profit at 559.3 billion won, up 12.83% and 10.69%, respectively, from a year earlier. Net profit for the period was expected at 495.3 billion won, up 16.90% year over year.
By business line, the "Naver platform" segment—which covers search, display, and commerce ads as well as shopping, Members, and Place services—posted first-quarter revenue of 839.3 billion won, up 14.7% from a year earlier. In particular, first-quarter ad revenue rose 9.3% year over year as the contribution of AI to revenue growth topped 50%, helped by upgrades to the AI-based ad solution "AdBoost." During the same period, service revenue increased 35.6% year over year, led by the commerce ecosystem including Naver Plus Store, memberships, and N Delivery. However, total Naver platform revenue fell 0.6% from the previous quarter.
In the first quarter, revenue for the "financial platform" that represents the Naver Pay business rose 18.9% from a year earlier and 2.5% from the previous quarter to 459.7 billion won. First-quarter N Pay payment volume came to 24.2 trillion won, up 23.4% year over year on growth in Smart Store and expansion across external ecosystems. Naver said it will strengthen links between order, payment, and regular-customer data accumulated on the offline integrated terminal "N Pay Connect" and search and reservation data on Place, further extending Naver's online competitiveness into offline.
The "global challenge" business segment—which spans C2C businesses Kream, Soda, Poshmark, and Wallapop; content such as Webtoon and Snow; and enterprise in Naver Cloud Platform, Line Works, and Labs—recorded first-quarter revenue of 941.6 billion won, up 18.4% from a year earlier and 5.1% from the previous quarter. Notably, C2C revenue rose 57.7% year over year and 22.9% quarter over quarter in the first quarter, helped by completion of Wallapop consolidation and steady growth at Poshmark, Kream, and Soda. During the same period, enterprise revenue increased 18.8% year over year on AI, Digital Twin-related businesses, and growth at Line Works.
Chief Executive Choi Soo-yeon said, "Naver is a unique platform that holds search, commerce, and payment infrastructure—the core competitiveness of the AI agent era—in one flow," adding, "Centering on our 'executional AI' strategy, we will build a virtuous cycle that raises user satisfaction and expands monetization, while continually finding opportunities in global challenge areas such as C2C and sovereign AI to accelerate overall revenue growth."