FSN Surpasses Last Year's Sales in 3Q... "Achieving Revaluation Based on Performance and Growth Potential"

FSN achieved an earnings surprise in the third quarter, accelerating its performance growth. The company also plans to re-evaluate its corporate value, which had been relatively low compared to its achievements.

FSN recorded its highest-ever quarterly sales in the third quarter of this year. On a consolidated basis, sales reached 86.7 billion KRW, marking a 74% increase compared to the same period last year. Operating profit turned positive to 2.9 billion KRW compared to the previous quarter. The cumulative sales amounted to 182.5 billion KRW, surpassing last year’s annual sales within just three quarters and nearly reaching the record annual sales of 184.4 billion KRW set in 2021. In fact, Jaemo Lee, an analyst at Growth Research, predicted that FSN’s expected sales for this year could reach 250 billion KRW.

The bio healthcare tech sector, which requires continuous investment, is managed by Hyper Corporation, while FSN is focusing on maximizing profitability and growth through its advertising marketing and accelerating businesses. From January to October this year, the advertising marketing and accelerating businesses achieved cumulative sales of 143.1 billion KRW and operating profit of 13.7 billion KRW, proving the success of FSN’s management strategy. Despite the worst market conditions in this business sector, FSN continues its record-breaking performance since its founding.

The main factors driving performance growth include the turnaround through restructuring of the advertising marketing division and remarkable growth in the brand accelerating division. The advertising marketing division was restructured by integrating similar businesses or loss-making companies around core affiliates. This improved business efficiency significantly and maximized synergy among core affiliates. Since the restructuring, advertising marketing results, which had been dependent on seasonality, have steadily improved, achieving a complete turnaround this year.

The brand accelerating division played the biggest role in FSN’s earnings surprise. To overcome the limitations of the traditional advertising industry, FSN has focused on growing brand businesses that can achieve mutual growth with partner brands. This business, which had sales of only 200 million KRW in its first year in 2019, has established itself as a core business expected to achieve 100 billion KRW in sales and 15 billion KRW in operating profit within six years. Next year, FSN plans to pursue full-scale global expansion.

FSN also expresses confidence in its future growth potential. Its core advertising marketing business is steadily stabilizing, and the brand business division set a new monthly sales record again in October, continuing its upward performance trend. The platform business is also becoming a new growth engine for FSN, with the hair loss medical community ‘Daedamo’ and the global K-pop fandom platform ‘MyOnePick’ establishing themselves as key platforms in their respective categories. Furthermore, as advertising marketing trends rapidly shift around generative AI, FSN is leading this area most quickly with its proprietary AI platforms such as ‘Crex.ai’ and ‘Creling,’ as well as its dedicated AI organization ‘Aidea Lab.’

Seonggyo Seo, CEO of FSN, stated, "FSN’s corporate value is currently rated at an all-time low due to various external adversities and concerns from multiple markets." He added, "In fact, FSN’s market capitalization does not even reach the value of a single subsidiary’s equity. However, since FSN is a company with both strong performance and future growth potential, it is being operated stably, and we believe there is a very high possibility of revaluation. We will do our best to turn this crisis into an opportunity and ensure that FSN receives appropriate valuation."