NHN posted its best-ever quarterly results in the second quarter of this year, powered by balanced growth in games, payments, and artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud businesses.
NHN said on Aug. 11 that second-quarter revenue on a consolidation basis rose 25.3% from a year earlier to 757.9 billion won. Operating profit climbed 164.1% to 57.9 billion won in the same period. Both revenue and operating profit were record highs on a quarterly basis.
By business line, game revenue rose 21.5% year over year to 139.6 billion won. The change in the regulatory environment for web board games and the offline tournament "HPT" of "Hangame Royal Hold'em" becoming the largest event in Korea drove the gains. Overall web board game revenue in the second quarter increased 15% from a year earlier.
The Japan game business also kept growing. In Japan, "#Compass" collaborated with "Chainsaw Man," helping total mobile game revenue in Japan rise 47% from a year earlier.
Payment revenue came to 394 billion won, up 27.3% from a year earlier. NHN KCP's transaction value grew 34% year over year on the back of onboarding new large merchants. As a result, revenue increased 27.5% in the same period, further cementing its market position as the No. 1 PG company in Korea.
In technology, growth in the artificial intelligence (AI) graphics processing unit (GPU) business gathered pace. Revenue rose 52.9% from a year earlier to 159.8 billion won. NHN Cloud began generating stable revenue from the Seoul Yangpyeong region, where the supply of GPU as a service based on Nvidia B200 has ramped up, lifting second-quarter revenue 85.3% year over year. Japan tech subsidiary NHN Techorus also increased revenue 27% from a year earlier on steady growth in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) resale business.
The other segment fell 8.8% from a year earlier. NHN Link's second-quarter revenue increased 25% in the same period, driven by higher concert revenue.
An NHN official said, "In the second half, we will accelerate growth in our core businesses to establish a more solid foundation for revenue generation."
In the games business, NHN plans to focus its new title development capabilities on the Japan market going forward. In particular, the new title "Puchi Dragon of the Fantasy World," a collaboration between NHN's game division and Japan's NHN PlayArt, is targeting a launch this winter, and NHN PlayArt plans to participate in the Tokyo Game Show in September to showcase major new titles and live games, including "Puchi Dragon of the Fantasy World."
In the stablecoin business, cited as a new growth driver for payments, NHN KCP held a demo day for financial institutions and technology partners in July and demonstrated actual payments and merchant settlement procedures by combining a digital wallet with the Payco app, based on a mainnet co-developed with global Blockchain company "Avalanche." NHN KCP plans to continue advancing related infrastructure and payment models, leveraging its existing merchant network and operating capabilities.
Leading the technology business, NHN Cloud plans to aggressively expand its AI infrastructure business. To proactively meet rapidly growing GPU demand, it aims to secure at least an additional 30 megawatts (MW) of AI data center capacity by next year and to expand its latest GPU asset base to B300 or higher in existing regions. NHN Cloud said, "In the Seoul Yangpyeong region, which is operating through the government GPU build-out project, new long-term contracts are being discussed for the remaining portion of the currently self-operated capacity."
NHN CEO Jeong Woo-jin said, "The results of the management efficiency and cost control we have pursued over the past few years began to show in earnings starting in the fourth quarter of last year, and this year is when the performance of our key businesses is taking off on that foundation," adding, "This second quarter is the first quarter in which those results were confirmed as profit, and we will take it as the starting point of a growth phase and carry this momentum into the second half."