New Virtual World 'Metaverse'
Infinite Possibilities in Gaming and Entertainment Industries
[Asia Economy Reporter Minji Lee] As the boundary between virtual and reality becomes blurred with the advent of the 'Metaverse' era, the stock market is also busy searching for related companies.
According to the Korea Exchange on the 12th, Big Hit's stock price surged about 32% until the previous day this year. Institutional and individual net buying was prominent, with institutional investors including pension funds purchasing 54.3 billion KRW worth of Big Hit shares despite a net selling trend in domestic stocks. Wysiwyg Studios, the CG production company for the movie 'Space Sweepers', also surged about 43% this year.
This year, the keyword 'Metaverse' has appeared in the stock market, drawing attention to beneficiary stocks. The term is a compound of 'meta', meaning processing or abstraction, and 'universe', referring to the real world, indicating a virtual world based on reality that transcends it. With the shift to a contactless and online era, the metaverse market is expected to grow rapidly.
Roblox, listed on the U.S. stock market on the 10th (local time), is considered a company that has well implemented a metaverse platform through the organic combination of games, social networking services (SNS), and augmented reality (VR). Users can enjoy games with digital characters, create content, communicate with others, and conduct currency transactions. ARK Investment, which mainly invests in companies with high future growth value, purchased 500,000 shares on the day of listing, raising expectations for growth. The stock price continued to rise for two consecutive trading days, increasing about 14% compared to the initial trading price of $64.5.
In the domestic stock market, media-related companies such as entertainment and gaming are gaining attention. Big Hit and Naver are representative companies that have strategically partnered to capture the metaverse platform market. Naver's core competitiveness lies in Naver Z's 'Zepeto'. It is a platform where users can create avatars as they wish, communicate, trade items, and generate revenue through content production. Since its launch in 2018, it has reached 200 million users. Dongryun Lee, a researcher at KB Securities, analyzed, "Zepeto has an 80% teenage user base and has limitless potential for expansion into existing business sectors such as shopping, advertising, and fintech, making it a rapidly emerging growth driver. It will expand business areas by extending businesses occurring in daily life into the virtual realm."
Big Hit is responding most swiftly to the metaverse trend in the entertainment industry. Last year, it invested 7 billion KRW in Naver Z and is increasing profitability by selling artists' emotes (emotions) in virtual spaces. If the global fandom platform 'Weverse' expands into a metaverse platform, various business models are expected to be realized. Minha Choi, a researcher at Samsung Securities, said, "Since it can broaden contact points with artists through virtual reality, it will become a model that can generate revenue in a new way in the entertainment industry."
Interest is also growing in companies that have secured special effects or visual effects (VFX) content production technology, such as Dexter and Wysiwyg Studios. Wysiwyg Studios even specified the metaverse as a business purpose through a shareholders' meeting. The immersive content market, which is the core of the metaverse, has grown at an average annual rate of 27% since 2016, expanding its scale. 'Giantstep', scheduled to be listed on the 24th, is also evaluated as a metaverse-related company with strengths not only in special effects production but also in real-time content production.
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