[Click eStock] "NCSoft, Target Price Raised Sharply by 60%"

Lineage W Success...Initial Launch Performance Rated as All-Time High
Blueprint for NFT and Metaverse Business Presented

[Asia Economy Reporter Gong Byung-sun] NCSoft posted third-quarter earnings this year that fell short of market expectations (consensus). Nevertheless, Ebest Investment & Securities recently raised its target stock price by 60%, highly valuing the success of the newly released game ‘Lineage W’ and the company’s vision for non-fungible tokens (NFT) and the metaverse.

According to Ebest Investment & Securities on the 12th, NCSoft’s third-quarter revenue this year was 500.6 billion KRW, down 14.45% year-on-year, and operating profit was 96.3 billion KRW, down 55.78% over the same period. These figures were 10.70% and 24.27% below the respective consensus estimates.

Nonetheless, Ebest Investment & Securities raised NCSoft’s target stock price from the previous 740,000 KRW to 1,180,000 KRW, an increase of about 60%. The investment opinion was maintained as ‘Buy.’ The closing price on the previous day was 780,000 KRW.

The significant increase in the target stock price was due to the success of Lineage W, which was released on the 4th. The game’s performance from the 4th to the 10th in terms of both revenue and traffic is estimated to be the highest among all NCSoft games to date. Accordingly, the number of servers increased from 108 to 132, with plans to add 12 more servers on the day.

Seong Jong-hwa, a researcher at Ebest Investment & Securities, explained, “The core of Lineage W’s success is the inter-country competition system. Real-time communication among users from various countries and the naturally formed competitive structure between countries played a significant role in greatly enhancing the game’s appeal.”

Additionally, the company presented a vision for NFT-based ‘Play-to-Earn’ (P2E) games and metaverse business. P2E refers to a game structure where players earn money through the in-game ecosystem. Researcher Seong said, “NCSoft’s strong genre, massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), inherently have an economic system operating within a virtual world, representing a rudimentary form of the metaverse. Since acquiring and distributing items are key elements of the game, it is suitable for applying NFT-based P2E games.”

Going forward, NCSoft plans to release a considerable number of new titles as NFT-based P2E games. Lineage W’s North American and European releases scheduled for the first half of next year will be launched as NFT games. Titles such as Aion 2 and Project TL may also apply NFTs with simultaneous global releases.

The metaverse business is being conducted through Universe, a subsidiary entertainment platform. Universe is promoting virtual concerts and virtual fan meetings using augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and extended reality (XR). Researcher Seong stated, “Some services of Universe represent the early form of the metaverse. Ultimately, NCSoft aims to complete its metaverse services by linking them with its strong gaming assets.”

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