The authors are analysts of NH Investment & Securities. They can be reached at jy.lee@nhqv.com and jaemin.ahn@nhqv.com, respectively. -- Ed. - On Mar 16, the Shinsegae Group and NAVER agreed on a strategic alliance to strengthen their on/offline commerce capabilities. NAVER purchased 824,176 shares
Korean e-commerce companies are moving to forge new alliances against Coupang.Naver, which started as an Internet search company and expanded its scope to news, content, finance, and shopping, has forged a strong alliance with Shinsegae Group, a Korean distribution and retail giant. The two companie
Coupang has made a successful debut on the New York Stock Exchange. The company's stock closed at US$49.25 on March 11 (local time), the first day of trading, a 40.71 percent higher than its initial offering price of US$35.Coupang's market capitalization reached about US$88.65 billion (about
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. She can be reached at jy.lee@nhqv.com. -- Ed. Moving forward, Coupang is to focus on product category expansion and strengthening its C2C competitiveness. In turn, rivalry is likely to be sparked with firms that have thus far avoided direct com
The author is an analyst of Shinhan Investment Corp. He can be reached at sejonghong@shinhan.com. -- Ed. Competitors seeking to dethrone the domestic market leaderStudio Dragon, a subsidiary of CJ Group’s media business unit CJ ENM, has been the undisputed leader of the domestic content industry wit
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at jaemin.ahn@nhqv.com. -- Ed. NAVER’s subsidiary LINE and Softbank’s subsidiary Z Holdings finally merged to form New Z Holdings. NAVER holds a 50% stake in A Holdings, the parent company of Z Holdings, which should further e
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at midas.sohn@nhqv.com. -- Ed. AI trend (1): Implications of GPT-3GPT-3 receives attention as innovative technologyAfter being wowed by DeepMind’s AI AlphaGo in Mar 2016, the world was surprised again by OpenAI’s Generation Pr
Naver announced on Feb. 25 that it has invested 115 million euros in Wallapop, the largest virtual marketplace for resellers in Spain.Naver participated in a 157-million-euro funding organized by Korelya Capital for Wallapop. The Spanish e-commerce company plans to invest the funds to expand its inf
The author is an analyst of KB Securities. He can be reached at drlee@kbfg.com. -- Ed. A leading player in the Metaverse race We recommend BUY on Naver as we expect the company to emerge as a prime beneficiary of the rise of the Metaverse—a portmanteau of the prefix “meta” (meaning beyond) and “univ
Google Korea is considering halving its app fees with the National Assembly of South Korea putting pressure on it with an amendment to the Telecommunications Business Act, which is to prohibit Google’s mandatory in-app payment policy.Last year, Google Korea announced that content apps on Google Play
The author is a strategist of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at lawrence.kim@nhqv.com. -- Ed.As posited by some literary analysts, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a not-so-subtle argument for the benefits of inflation to workers and farmers in terms of reducing the real value of borrowi
Naver Cloud (CEO Park Won-ki) announced on Feb. 8 that it has launched CLOVA Dubbing, a web-based editing tool that allows users to download user-inputted text as a sound source and video by synthesizing AI voices into videos or PDF files.Clova Dubbing synthesizes the user-entered text into an AI vo
The author is an analyst of KB Securities. He can be reached at drlee@kbfg.com. -- Ed. 4Q20 OP beats consensus — CJ ENM posted 4Q20 revenue of KRW944.3bn (-6.9% YoY) and OP of KRW87.9bn (+106.0% YoY). While revenue fell short of consensus by 1.2%, OP exceeded by 5.8%. We attribute the solid OP to: (
The Korea Communications Commission announced on Feb. 2 that the domestic OTT service usage rose from 52 percent to 66.3 percent in 2020.YouTube showed an overwhelming proportion of 62.3 percent, followed by Netflix (16.3 percent), Facebook (8.6 percent), Naver TV (4.8 percent), Wavve (3.2 percent),
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at junsup@nhqv.com. -- Ed. Although Mirae’s 4Q20 results came in below consensus, we attach no significance, noting the booking of several one-off items. The firm should enjoy solid 2021 earnings on accelerated money movement
Long gone are the days of image- and text-based social platforms. From Instagram — with its “IGTV” video content hub — to Naver — which announced the ‘video-ization’ of popular webtoons and web fiction IP — social media and other technology companies are deepening their degrees of video integration.
The author is an analyst of Shinhan Investment Corp. He can be reached at mj1224@shinhan.com. -- Ed. Rapid growth of ad business to help remove earnings concernsNAVER posted sales of KRW1.51tr (+28.3% YoY) and operating profit of KRW323.8bn (+17.6% YoY) for 4Q20. Backed by sharp growth of the ad bus
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. She can be reached at michelle.cho@nhqv.com. -- Ed. KG Inicis, one of Korea’s leading PG players, has adopted a selection and concentration strategy, seeking new sales growth opportunities. Although earnings momentum appears sound, we maintain
The author is an analyst of KB Securities. He can be reached at drlee@kbfg.com. -- Ed. Naver decides equity investment in entertainment platform operator beNX— Naver announced on Jan 27, 2021 that it would invest KRW411.8bn (a 49% stake) in beNX—a Big Hit Entertainment subsidiary and the operator of
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at midas.sohn@nhqv.com. -- Ed. In 2021, KG Mobilians should enjoy strong synergy effects from its recent merger with KG Allat. Among additional positives, we note healthy transaction inflow from Coupang and Wemakeprice, rising