[Click eStock] "KakaoPay, Positive Turn to Profit... Investment Attractiveness Not High"

Korea Investment & Securities maintained a neutral investment opinion on Kakao Pay on the 11th. Although an improvement in earnings is expected, a conservative view was maintained because the absolute profit scale does not appear to be large.

Kakao Pay's first-quarter revenue is expected to increase by 26.3% year-on-year to 222.8 billion KRW, and operating profit is expected to turn positive to 7.6 billion KRW. Both figures exceed market expectations.

Korea Investment & Securities forecasted that high growth would continue due to the relatively stable loan brokerage and the effect of the fee increase for overseas stocks by Kakao Pay Securities, which began in the fourth quarter.

Jung Ho-yoon, a researcher at Korea Investment & Securities, predicted that Kakao Pay would continue its stable profit trend. He explained, "Since it had not been able to escape losses since its listing, the turnaround to profitability due to the expansion of sales in the highly profitable financial business division is a positive investment point."

However, he judged the investment attractiveness to be low. Researcher Jung said, "The payment business division, which accounts for about 60% of sales, saw its growth rate fall to single digits due to a higher base and a slowdown in online and offline consumption. Considering that the growth rate increase from the fee hike effect normalizes after one year, the investment attractiveness is still not high."