Hancom WITH, the de facto holding company of Hancom Group, bought more Hancom shares than initially planned, pushing its standalone equity stake above 30%. As market volatility continues, the largest shareholder's additional purchases are seen as showing confidence in Hancom's growth potential.
Hancom WITH said on the 10th that it purchased 1,081,666 Hancom common shares on the market from June 4 to July 3. That amounts to 4.47% equity, with about 20.6 billion won invested.
This exceeds the acquisition plan disclosed on Apr. 30. At the time, Hancom WITH said it would buy 792,000 shares by investing about 16.5 billion won, but it actually secured about 37% more in the number of shares and about 25% more in amount. With this purchase, Hancom WITH's Hancom equity stake rose to 31.20% from 26.73%. The largest shareholder group's equity stake, including related parties, also expanded to 40.15%.
Hancom said this equity increase reflects the largest shareholder's conviction about the growth potential of the artificial intelligence (AI) business. Hancom has been rapidly increasing the share of its AI business recently. Last year's standalone revenue was 175.3 billion won, up 10.2% from a year earlier and the highest ever. Of that, AI package revenue was about 8.9 billion won, accounting for about 5% of total revenue. AI package revenue accounts for more than half of last year's revenue increase (16.2 billion won).
The AI business has grown this year as well. First-quarter standalone revenue was 46.5 billion won, marking a quarterly record, while AI revenue was 5.2 billion won, accounting for 11.21% of total revenue. A year earlier, AI revenue made up about 0.04%.
Based on its own technology that extracts and structures unstructured data, Hancom is advancing technology that converts documents into formats AI can understand and analyzes relationships and context among data. On that basis, it has rolled out AI solutions such as Hancom Assistant and Hancompedia in succession.
Song Sang-yeop, CEO of Hancom WITH, said, "Regardless of market conditions, as the largest shareholder we have steadily increased our Hancom equity to ensure responsible management and build a stable governance structure," and added, "This equity purchase stems from confidence in Hancom's strong technological moat and global growth path."