Korea Center Achieves Record-High Performance in First Half of the Year... "Will Generate Record-High Profits"

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoo Hyun-seok] Korea Center, a specialized e-commerce company, announced on the 17th through its first half performance disclosure that it recorded consolidated sales of 170.68 billion KRW and operating profit of 9.96 billion KRW, achieving the highest performance since its establishment.

This represents a 20.1% increase in sales and a 14.3% increase in net profit compared to the same period last year. The first half EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) reached 16.86 billion KRW, up 5.2% year-on-year. The company showed steady growth in overseas direct purchase services, including shopping solutions, advertising, big data, and fulfillment.

By business segment in the first half, the MakeShop platform, responsible for domestic business, recorded sales of 46.27 billion KRW, up 19.1% from the same period last year. Shopping mall transaction volume and market-linked transaction volume totaled 4.915 trillion KRW, supported by the shopping mall search engine 'Dachatda' and Coupang-exclusive web solutions that enable easy and fast product registration, inventory management, and product modification. The MakeShop platform’s advertising business contributed to increasing sales and operating profit with a 26% year-on-year sales growth.

In the second half, the shopping mall-dedicated search engine 'Dachatda,' developed for the first time in the industry in collaboration with the price comparison specialist platform Enuri Price Comparison, will actively contribute to improving shopping mall sales. In addition, the company plans to expand free support to e-commerce shopping malls beyond MakeShop and aggressively promote a business model based on its proprietary ‘Dachatda’ search engine.

The Moltail platform, responsible for overseas business, recorded sales of 105 billion KRW, a 21.8% increase year-on-year. Overseas direct purchase transactions, including global fulfillment, grew 31.7% year-on-year, reaching approximately 1.2 million cases. This was mainly due to the advanced global logistics tech network centered on direct purchase and fulfillment businesses, built over the past decade through proactive investments based on nine logistics centers in seven countries worldwide ? Korea, the United States, China, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Spain ? as well as the Italy MD branch.

While operating profit surged temporarily in the first half of last year due to the special issue of mask supply amid the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s first half achieved operating profit exceeding last year’s without any special issues. Furthermore, in the second half of this year, based on nine logistics centers in seven countries, the company plans to put the G2C (Global-To-Customer) business, which expands direct and reverse direct purchase businesses in partnership with global brands, on track to create synergy with the year-end consumption season. Along with this, it expects to show its best performance through comprehensive profit business expansion, including the opening of new logistics centers in Australia and the European market.

The Enuri platform, responsible for big data and price comparison businesses, recorded sales of 15.37 billion KRW, a 6.9% increase year-on-year. As of the first half of this year, it has secured over 1 billion standard product data and product data, with big data sales accounting for 39.2% of Enuri platform sales, solidifying its position as the number one big data sales operator. In the price comparison sector, sales of non-face-to-face solution products, including health foods, convenience foods, and fresh foods, increased due to the impact of untact (contactless) trends.

Kim Gi-rok, CEO of Korea Center, stated, "As competition in the e-commerce market intensifies and expands, both domestic and overseas businesses have grown evenly. Especially in the second half, we expect to achieve record-high profits through proactive business expansion based on the shopping mall search engine ‘Dachatda’ and the G2C business.”

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