Korean internet group Naver reported fourth-quarter revenues up 19.3 percent year-on-year to KRW 750.2 billion, thanks to global growth in its messaging platform Line. Line's revenues were up 61.9 percent year-on-year to KRW 221.7 billion, helped by its expanding stickers and gaming services.
Line reported a more than doubling in annual revenues, to JPY 77.4 billion. In the fourth quarter, revenues were up 10 percent sequentially and 78 percent year-on-year to JPY 23.6 billion. Line said it had an average 181 million active users each month, around half of which are in its top three markets Japan, Taiwan and Thailand. The service had more than 10 million users in 13 countries at year-end.
Naver's operating profit was up 30.3 percent to KRW 196.1 billion, and net profit jumped to KRW 134.5 billion from KRW 54.1 billion a year ago. Line's expansion helped increase the share of revenues from outside Korea to 33 percent in the quarter, versus 26 percent a year ago.
Since Q4, Line is focusing on markets where it has a high market share, mainly in east and southeast Asia well as South American countries like Colombia and Mexico. It also plans a challenger strategy to break into the US market. The company said it plans to expand recently launched businesses such as Line Play and O2O as well as add new services such as music distribution and global marketing of Line Manga, its e-comic service for smartphones already available in Japan.
