[Click eStock] "WidePlanet, a Company Growing with the Digital Win-Win Policy and Corporate Value"

Q3 Operating Profit Expected to Turn Positive
Shinhan Investment Corp. Maintains Wider Planet Target Price at 37,000 KRW

[Asia Economy Reporter Gong Byung-sun] Wider Planet is expected to grow alongside the strengthening digital win-win trend in the future. Its operating profit for the third quarter of this year is projected to turn positive.

On the 15th, Shinhan Financial Investment forecasted Wider Planet's third-quarter sales to increase by 17.4% year-on-year to 9 billion KRW, and operating profit to turn positive to 600 million KRW during the same period. Although it will take time for full recovery from the COVID-19 impact, the mid-to-long-term inflow of long-tail advertisers who use sales channels as advertising is the reason for the operating profit turnaround. The key metric, click-through rate (CTR), is also on the rise.

The corporate value is expected to increase along with the strengthening digital win-win trend. Recently, demands for win-win cooperation with global big tech companies, including those in Korea, have intensified. Hong Se-jong, a researcher at Shinhan Financial Investment, explained, “Big tech companies building digital ecosystems are likely to strengthen their business structures by collaborating with strong small and medium big data, software, and advertising companies in the future,” adding, “Wider Planet’s programmatic buying industry will grow rapidly going forward.” Programmatic buying refers to the automatic purchase of digital media through pre-made algorithms rather than human intervention.

In particular, Wider Planet holds a high position in Korea’s digital industry in terms of win-win cooperation and efficiency. For major advertisers including Coupang and SSG, it can pursue extreme efficiency relative to advertising costs, and internet companies selling media space can induce price increases through programmatic buying. Additionally, it provides big data analysis based on machine learning to domestic manufacturing, service, and financial companies such as LG and KB. In the future, it plans to launch a commerce business and provide an e-commerce mall that guarantees traffic.

Accordingly, Shinhan Financial Investment maintained its investment opinion of “Buy” and a target price of 37,000 KRW for Wider Planet. The closing price on the previous day was 21,200 KRW.

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