Higher-than-expected
The increase in sales revenue was led by Naver’s overseas business, including the service of the LINE mobile messenger, and mobile advertising business. The company’s overseas sales revenue reached 335.5 billion won during the period.
By business unit, advertising recorded 672.7 billion won in sales with a year-on-year growth of 27%. Its overseas ad sales revenue increased 69.9% from a year earlier to account for 18% of the total advertising sales of the company while the domestic ad sales showed a year-on-year growth of 20.2%.
Its content sales revenue rose by 23.1% to 237.4 billion won. The overseas content sales increased by 21.9% year on year to represent 87% of the amount while webtoons helped the company increase its domestic content sales by 30.9%.
Naver also announced that its Naver Pay service, which made its debut in July last year, reached 200 billion won in payment in its sixth month in the market and recorded a monthly payment of 280 billion won in March this year alone. The amount of payment via Naver Shopping increased by approximately 40% year on year in the first quarter, too.
In the meantime, the consolidated operating revenue of LINE Corporation, Naver’s subsidiary in Japan, rose by 20.9% from a year ago to 304.1 billion won in that quarter. The advertising and gaming business units of the subsidiary each represented 35% of the amount, followed by sticker (22%) and the others. The number of monthly active LINE messenger users increased 3.4 million to 218.4 million while the number covering Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia jumped by 6.9 million.