NAVER North American market has more than 5 million online comics per month, the number of American comic authors and works has increased by 50%, and the payment rate has increased by 200% year-on-year. Piccoma, a web comics platform owned by Kakao japan, currently ranks among the top 10 best sellers in Japan.
Author: Yiyi
Recently, the South Korean Internet companies NAVER and Kakao have released financial report for the second quarter.
Affected by the epidemic, people's lives have undergone tremendous changes, reducing contact with people, and moving work and life online have gradually become a new way of life.
NAVER and KAKAO can be said to be one of the few Internet Korean companies that have benefited more from the epidemic.
In the second quarter, NAVER's actual performance increased by 16.7% year-on-year to 11.152 billion yuan, and operating profit increased by 79.7% to 1.352 billion yuan. KAKAO's performance in the second quarter increased by 30% year-on-year to RMB 5.586 billion, and operating profit increased by 142% year-on-year to RMB 573 million.
Due to the gratifying results of the two companies in the first half of the year, the stock prices have also risen one after another. Foreigners who had been mainly selling off gradually began to buy a large number of shares of the two companies. As a result, NAVER's stock price reached a high of 366,000 won on August 3, while KAKAO reached a high of 314,500 won.
Although the actual performance of NAVER and KAKAO's online business is outstanding, the business of offline physical stores such as LINE FRIENDS and KAKAO FRIENDS will inevitably be affected by the epidemic, and it is still unable to recover the previous results.
Next, let's take a look at the detailed data of NAVER and KAKAO.
NAVER: Online content sales have grown rapidly, but offline business is still worrying
NAVER in the second quarter benefited from the increase in online shopping users and advertising revenue, as well as the help of emerging businesses such as finance, web comics, and cloud services. , The overall operating income increased by 16.7%, an increase of 999 million yuan (170.4 billion won) from the previous quarter. Net profit for the quarter reached 532 million yuan. Operating profit was 1.352 billion yuan, operating profit margin was 12.1%, and net profit margin was 4.8%. The net profit margin has decreased compared to the first quarter.
But on the contrary, the LINE FRIENDS business, because 264 million (45 billion won) was invested in non-operating expenses, which caused the impact of asset impairment losses, and only realized 532 million (907 Billion won) ’s net profit.
In terms of content business, the overall (web comics, music, VLIVE) sales in the second quarter reached 467 million yuan. As NAVER's web comics business enters the French and South American markets, the number of users has also increased. In the second quarter, global monthly active users reached 64 million, and transaction volume increased by 57%. Moreover, NAVER's web comics live in the North American market exceeded 5 million per month. In the United States, the number of local comic authors and works stationed in NAVER has increased by 50%, the payment rate has also doubled compared to the previous year, and the payment amount has increased by 50%.
In order to integrate and manage the web comics business scattered in the three countries of South Korea, the United States and Japan, NAVER is trying to reshape the web comics business into a development model centered on the United States with collaboration and cooperation between Korea, the United States and Japan. In addition, in order to increase the payment rate of online comics, NAVER decided to merge the online comics business with the N STORE business. For this purpose, it invested 2.345 billion yuan (400 billion won) . This investment scale will increase to 35.17 next year. 100 million yuan (600 billion won) .
(quarterly sales of the content department)
On August 2, NAVER’s paid contentThe daily transaction volume has grown rapidly, setting a record of 17.586 million (3 billion won) and . In August 2019, it also set a record of 11.724 million (2 billion won) and . The global sales of NAVER's comics in the second quarter increased by 57% . In May, NAVER WEBTOON's global paid content transaction volume exceeded the record of 410 million yuan (70 billion won) . In addition to the consumption of the work itself, the income of
comics has become an important trend in IP management.
Regarding the adaptation of live-action film and television series, NAVER WEBTOON’s super-popular work "Goddess Descends" has decided to become a TV drama, and the main role has also been finalized a few days ago. The male lead Li Xiuhao is played by Che Yinyou, who has caused a sensation in "My ID is a Jiangnan American", and the male second Han Shujun is played by Huang Renye, who has starred in "Mung Bean". The heroine Ren Zhujing is played by Wen Jiaxuan, who has appeared in "The Incarnation of the Quarter" and "The Man's Memory Method".
Another popular work "Vigilante" decided to set up the production of TV series and movies at the same time, which also caused quite a stir. And "Today is Full of Love" (paraphrase) has not yet started casting work. In terms of animation adaptation of
, "Yumi's Cell", "Letter of Fate" (transliteration) , and "NANO LIST" are also officially approved. The theatrical version of "Yumi Cells" was produced by Sides, who participated in the production of "Red Shoes", and LICO, who had participated in the production of the manga "In the Mood for Love Pt.0SAVE ME" with the main role of BTS, was responsible for the production of "The Letter of Fate" "Theatrical version, and Studio Gale, which is responsible for the production of children's animations such as "Little Penguin Baolulu", is responsible for the production of "NANO LIST" series of animation works.
, the animated work "The Tower of God" has already been broadcast in South Korea, the United States, Japan and other countries and has gained a lot of attention. In the United States, it even ranked ninth in the Twitter hotspot as soon as it started, while in Reddit, it ranked first in the hot anime of the week.
KAKAO: The epidemic is an opportunity, and KAKAOM’s business restarts have gratifying gains.
Under the impact of the epidemic, keeping people apart has become the norm in life. As a safe and convenient tool, the Internet has penetrated into all aspects of people’s lives, whether it is communication, cultural entertainment, Entertainment and daily life are increasingly inseparable from the Internet.
Therefore, the daily active users of Kakao, which operates Kakao Talk, the largest communication software in Korea, grew to 45.508 million in the second quarter, a year-on-year increase of 1.09 million. Compared with the previous quarter, it increased by 32 Million people. The number of global users in the second quarter was 52.133 million, a year-on-year increase of 1.251 million, compared with the previous quarter, an increase of 365,000.
KAKAO’s overall sales in the second quarter were 5.586 billion yuan, of which platform revenue accounted for 2.888 billion yuan, accounting for 52%; content sales involving comics, novels and other paid content, games and other fields were 2.697 billion yuan (460.2 billion won) ) , accounting for 48% of total revenue, an increase of 13% year-on-year.
In the content department, the music department ranked first with 33% of revenue, followed by the paid content department with 26%, followed by games (23%) , IP business and other (18%) .
The sales of paid content were affected by the increase in KAKAO JAPAN (Piccoma) 's global revenue and the expansion of KAKAO PAGE’s IP business, which increased 46% year-on-year and 23% quarter-on-quarter (about 400 million yuan in the first quarter) , achieved a performance of 698 million yuan (119 billion won) .
It is worth mentioning that in the second quarter of 2020 PiccomaThe transaction volume increased by 2.5 times year-on-year, achieving sales of 286 million yuan (48.8 billion won) and , making a huge contribution to the value-added sales of paid content. In the first quarter of 2020, Piccoma's revenue was 160 million yuan (28.1 billion won) . In other words, Piccoma's total sales in the first half of 2020 will be approximately 450 million.
Piccoma is a web comics platform owned by Kakao japan. It was launched in Japan in 2016 and has become one of the most popular platforms for Japanese users, with nearly 20 million app downloads. Currently, Piccoma ranks firmly in the Top 10 in the overall best-selling list of the App Store in Japan, which is comparable to other game products.
Piccoma focuses on the expansion of overseas business outside of South Korea. It is understood that Piccoma has launched more than 30,000 works in Japan, and web comics are quite popular among users. For example, "I Upgrade Alone" launched on Piccoma. In March 2020, Japanese users paid more than 5.85 million yuan (1 billion won) . In terms of games like
, the IP work "Moonlight Engraver" and other games have been recognized by the market. Revenue in the second quarter increased by 9% year-on-year, compared with the previous quarter, an increase of 11%, reaching 630 million (107.5 billion won) ) sales. The proportion of mobile game sales decreased compared to the previous quarter, at 44%. The proportion of PC revenue has also shrunk by 2 percentage points to 42%. The reduction was made up by KAKAOVX, which accounted for 14% of sales. KAKAO VX’s main business is screen golf, which ranks second in the Korean industry and is an IP industry developed based on KAKAO FRIENDS.
IP business, KAKAOIX was affected by the epidemic, and its overall sales were difficult to recover. The year-on-year growth was only 1%, compared with the previous quarter's growth of only 1%, achieving sales of 485 million. On the other hand, KAKAO M benefited from the restart of the business, with a year-on-year increase of 4%, compared to an increase of 0.2% in the previous quarter, and achieved sales of 885 million (151 billion won) .
In addition, TV series based on the original comics serialized on DAUM Webtoon are also released in the second quarter. The TV series "Itaewon CLASS", which started broadcasting at the end of January and ended at the end of March, had the highest ratings of 16.5%. The film "Steel Rain" based on the original "STEEL RAIN" as a prototype has hit 164 million after its release in 2017. After the box office (23,622,300 US dollars), the second sequel was officially released on July 29, 2020. At the moment when relations between North Korea and South Korea are relatively tense, although it has attracted the attention of many Koreans, due to the epidemic, the business of theaters is still affected.
The broadcast of "Shuangjia Roadside Stalls" in South Korea is still broadcast by JTBC, which has a good foundation of cooperation, while overseas broadcast through Netflix.
In addition to the above-mentioned film and television works that have already been broadcast and released, KAKAOM is preparing for adaptations such as "Love Revolution" (NAVER comics) , "AMANZA", "Still strange" (paraphrase) and according to the Chinese TV series "To Us The adaptation of "Simply Little Beautiful" is "The Beautiful Us" (free translation) .
*For the convenience of readers, the currency unit of the text is converted into RMB according to the exchange rate of Korean won to RMB on August 15.
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