South Korea’s largest Internet portal operator Naver Corp. reported strong gain in its operating profit and revenue for the third quarter, backed by burgeoning mobile business and increasing ad revenue.

The company announced on Thursday that it posted 282.3 billion won ($247 million) in operating profit in July-September period, up 27.6 percent from 272.7 billion won in the same period of last year. The company recorded 198 billion won in net profit and 1.01 trillion won in sales in the quarter. The accumulated sales in the January-September period reached almost 3 trillion won.

The company’s mobile service business drove growth. The mobile sales accounted for 64 percent of the total sales this year, up from 55 percent in the third quarter of last year.

Ad revenue took up the lion’s share of 74 percent with 749.5 billion won, the content business, 22.5 percent with 227.5 billion won and others, 3.5 percent with 36 billion won. The advertisement sales rose 27.7 percent year on year thanks to an increase in mobile and overseas advertisements.

Of advertisement sales of 749.5 billion won, domestic advertisement sales amounted to 594.1 billion won. Among the domestic advertisement sales, 14 percent came from shopping platforms. The company’s mobile payment service Naver Pay has been rapidly growing with 21 million cumulative subscribers and more than 1 trillion won in transactions in the third quarter.

The company’s video live streaming service V Live has secured 200,000 subscribers in the third quarter. The company has focused on diversifying types of contents. It has expanded kinds of contents to indie music and fashion and it would add other new types of contents, too.

Naver plans to create synergy effects by connecting its messaging app Line with another mobile massaging app Snow. Line invested 50 billion won in Snow and secured a 25 percent stake in Snow.

Naver shares ended on Thursday at 859,000 won, up 11,000 won, or 1.3 percent, from the previous session.

By Shin Hyun-kyu

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]