[Click eStock] "NCSoft, Throne and Liberty Global Success... Anticipation for Next Title"

Samsung Securities forecasted on the 23rd that NCSoft's new title, "Throne and Liberty (TL)," will bottom out in the third quarter and rebound due to its global success.

Odonghwan, an analyst at Samsung Securities, stated, "Thanks to Amazon's aggressive marketing, TL surpassed 300,000 concurrent users on the game platform Steam," and added, "It also ranked among the top in sales, demonstrating success in the global market." Analyst Oh explained, "The significance lies not only in the short-term performance improvement due to TL's success but also in opening the possibility of entering the North American market through a new business model (BM)."

Analyst Odonghwan predicted, "With the reboot world release of Lineage M, major mobile game sales are expected to increase by about 8% in the third quarter compared to the previous quarter," and "reflecting TL's sales, overall sales in the third quarter are expected to improve by 6%." On the other hand, he said, "Operating profit is expected to record 1.3 billion KRW, falling 15% short of market consensus due to increased marketing costs related to Ho-yeon," and added, "Starting from the third quarter as the bottom, profitability is expected to improve in the fourth quarter with the reflection of TL sales and the release of Journey of Monarch."

He added, "NCSoft plans to defend its performance as much as possible until the release of the next major title Aion 2 by launching small to mid-sized new titles such as Journey of Monarch in the fourth quarter of this year and Taektan in the second quarter of next year," and "The success of TL is also raising expectations for the success of Aion 2."