Naver is planning to open an in-house hospital next month. According to the company, the hospital will be a paperless hospital and a test bed for its healthcare business expansion. The company is also planning to acquire 10 percent of ezCaretech by investing 30 billion won. ezCaretech provides elect
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has invested 1 trillion won in Nexon. Recently, a series of big deals has taken place in the global game industry, including Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. PIF has been expanding its investment in game companies and has recognized Nexon’s
The Ministry of Science and ICT designated Google, Netflix, Meta, Naver and Kakao as value added common carriers that must ensure service stability this year.According to the Telecommunications Business Act, every value added common carrier with an average daily user count of one million or more and
Samsung Electronics announced on Feb. 2 that its metaverse experience space unveiled at CES 2022 has logged over 4 million visits.The company's metaverse experience space, dubbed "My House," is built on Naver's Zepeto platform. The company said My House is the only brand service on Zepeto th
Corporate interest in private 5G networks is growing. Private 5G or local 5G refers to 5G communication networks built and operated by businesses in limited areas to utilize 5G's high speed, ultra-low latency and ultra-connectivity.Earlier, at the end of 2021, Naver Cloud was selected as the fir
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at jaemin.ahn@nhqv.com. -- Ed. Healthy sales growth continues at NAVER, and long-term earnings expansion is expected thanks to investment in new businesses. Having fallen along with the broader market downturn due to concerns
LG Energy Solution was listed on KOSPI on Jan. 27. Its initial stock price did not reach twice the IPO price. Its closing price fell more than 15 percent from the initial price.LG Energy Solution’s public offering price stood at 300,000 won. The subscription competition rate at institutional investo
Naver has recruited young scholars, including a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to upgrade its AI-powered search services.The company announced on Jan. 24 that it has recently recruited Professor Kim Yoon-hyung of MIT and Professor Karl Stratos of Rutgers University as
Naver Webtoon announced on Jan. 18 that its webtoon and web novel “Seven Fates: Chakho,” which was created through collaboration with the global boy band BTS, recorded 15 million cumulative views within two days of its global release. It is a new record among the company's works.Thanks to the re
Apple Korea’s sales amounted to approximately seven trillion won and its corporate tax payment was 31.3 billion won last year, when it sent 873 billion won, more than 700 percent of its net profit, to its U.S. parent company. For reference, Google Korea’s sales were 220.1 billion won last year, the
The Korea Communications Commission announced on Jan. 11 that Apple Korea submitted a plan on Jan. 7 for its compliance with the Telecommunications Business Act, which is to prohibit app market operators from forcing a certain way of payment in relation to developers.According to the plan, Apple Kor
The authors are analysts of Shinhan Investment Corp. They can be reached at sh.kim@shinhan.com and mintz95@shinhan.com, respectively. -- Ed. Banks with high share of variable-rate loans show stronger fundamentals during rate hike cyclesBanks with a relatively large portion of variable-rate loans ten
Nexon, one of South Korea's leading game publishers, will become the second-largest shareholder of Hollywood film production company AGBO, an independent film and television production company best known for its work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most notably "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Av
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at jaemin.ahn@nhqv.com. -- Ed. Given its continuing investment and healthy performance across a range of new businesses (eg, metaverse, webtoon, and content), NAVER should enjoy robust earnings growth over the mid/long term. I
Naver and Kakao are competing with each other in the North American entertainment content market, the largest of its kind in the world.Kakao Entertainment recently acquired Wuxiaworld for 45 billion won via Radish Media. The annual sales of the English web novel service have grown over 40 percent fo
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. She can be reached at mj27@nhqv.com. -- Ed. On the back of increasing high-margin sales both from Sulwhasoo and through e-commerce channels, AmorePacific’s China subsidiary should enjoy sales growth and profitability improvement moving ahead.Po
The Korea Exchange announced on Dec. 9 that a KRX-CSI joint index would be announced on Dec. 20.The Korea Exchange and the Shanghai Stock Exchange signed a memorandum of understanding in May for further cooperation in capital markets. The new index is a part of the MOU and will cover South Korean an
The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on Dec. 7 that it prepared a guideline regarding the implementation of the revised Telecommunications Business Act. The revised act became effective on Dec. 10, 2020 and is applied to six large value added common carriers (VACCs) so that their services provi
Platform companies are continuing to object to the Bill on the Fairness of Online Platform Intermediary Transactions, which was tabled in January this year. The companies have claimed that the bill is yet another regulation, and the Korea Fair Trade Commission has claimed that the bill is something
Enterprise research institute Leaders Index recently analyzed 197 listed subsidiaries of 30 business groups and announced on Dec. 6 that they had 7,438 non-outside director executives at the end of the third quarter of this year, the executives include 3,484 born in 1969 or later, and the ratio incr