[Click eStock] NHN, Disappointing Earnings... Stock Price Shows Lagging Improvement

The next title of Critical Force, Critical Ops (Critical Ops)

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Junho] Hana Financial Investment maintained the target price of NHN at 110,000 won on the 9th, despite last year's performance falling short of market expectations.

NHN's total sales last year recorded 662.3 billion won, up 15.6% from the previous year, and operating profit was 20.3 billion won, an improvement of 16.1% compared to the previous year. While sales met market expectations, operating profit fell short. Despite the natural decline in sales of existing games, it is expected that new games such as Critical Ops and AIMS will have difficulty acting as growth drivers.

By segment, game sales decreased by 1.9% compared to the previous quarter. The proportion of total sales also decreased to 21.3%. Despite the success of web board games, the disappointing part was the poor performance of new games released in the fourth quarter and games launched overseas.

On the other hand, the payment and advertising sectors, commerce, and technology subsidiaries each showed favorable results with increases of 36.2%, 14.2%, and 20.9% respectively compared to the previous year. In particular, it was analyzed that the fundamental market expansion of commerce and content sectors is becoming an opportunity factor along with the major paradigm shift of mobile transition.

Hana Financial Investment predicted, "Since expectations for aggressive fundamental improvements are not high, the stock price will move reflecting performance improvements and other factors in a lagging manner."