[Click eStock] "Naver's Shopping Fee Reform Yields 300 Billion KRW Sales Increase"

Samsung Securities expects Naver to achieve an annual revenue increase of 300 billion KRW due to changes in its shopping commission structure. The investment rating is maintained at Buy, and the target price has been raised from the previous 270,000 KRW to 300,000 KRW.

Naver recently announced plans to change its shopping commission structure starting in June. Previously, a 2% commission (including VAT) was charged only on purchases originating from Naver Shopping, but going forward, a sales commission of 1-4% will be applied to all sales.

Odonghwan Oh, a researcher at Samsung Securities, explained, "Considering that the commission rate is still lower compared to Coupang's 5-11%, seller backlash is expected to be limited," adding, "Given that last year’s Naver Shopping on-platform transaction volume was about 30 trillion KRW, this commission structure revision is expected to generate an annual revenue increase of approximately 300 billion KRW."

Additionally, Naver plans to launch a separate Plus Store app on the 12th of this month. The new app will apply AI product recommendation technology to comprehensively analyze users’ search and purchase histories, as well as recent interests, to organize the screen around products that users are likely to be interested in. This will also enable sellers to precisely advertise only to users with a high likelihood of purchase.

Researcher Oh stated, "Reflecting the effects of the Plus Store app launch and the commission structure increase, we are raising operating profit forecasts for 2025 and 2026 by 5.3% and 11.2%, respectively," and analyzed, "This year, Naver’s aggressive changes in shopping and the resulting profit growth are the most important drivers of stock price appreciation."