[Click eStock] "Kakao Enters Growth Phase in New Business Revenue"

Korea Investment & Securities Report
"Clear Business Growth Direction... Maintaining Positive Outlook"

[Asia Economy Reporter Minji Lee] Korea Investment & Securities maintained a buy rating and a target price of 430,000 KRW for Kakao on the 26th, stating that its new businesses have entered a revenue growth phase.

The fintech sector has diversified its business model from providing simple services such as remittances to brokering the sale of financial products like funds and insurance, earning commissions from these transactions. In the mobility sector, revenue sources are diversifying due to government deregulation and KakaoT Blue, including call fees and commissions from operations. Ho-yoon Jung, a researcher at Korea Investment & Securities, analyzed, “In the long term, with the introduction of app meters following recent deregulation, pricing plans will diversify, enabling Kakao to achieve additional revenue.”

Tokboard advertising, a key factor in Kakao’s performance improvement since the second half of last year, continues to see steady revenue growth as its customer base expands to include small and medium-sized advertisers and major advertisers increase their budgets. Based on this, Kakao plans to expand performance-based advertising to important inventories it owns, such as premium spaces on KakaoPage and the Daum portal.

Additionally, commerce transaction amounts through services like Kakao Gift are growing rapidly by more than 50% year-on-year, and webtoon platforms such as KakaoPage and Piccoma are also experiencing fast growth in transaction amounts and revenue, raising expectations for performance improvements across all business divisions.

Researcher Ho-yoon Jung stated, “Most businesses have moved beyond user growth to a stage where revenue is generated,” adding, “Existing core business units centered on advertising are also rapidly increasing their performance.” He further noted, “Although there may be concerns about the stock price rising throughout the first half of the year, it is still advisable to maintain a positive outlook at this point, given the clear direction of performance improvement and business growth.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.