[Featured Stock] Aton Recovers IPO Price After 2 Years... Cumulative Operating Profit 7x and NFT Authentication New Business Expectations

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyungsoo Park] Aton is showing strong performance. For the first time in two years since December 2019, its public offering price of 43,000 KRW has been recovered. Expectations that the company will expand its business area into the security sector of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) seem to have influenced the stock price. Aton recorded cumulative sales of 32.1 billion KRW and operating profit of 6.6 billion KRW through the third quarter of this year. Sales increased by 54% and operating profit surged by an impressive 612% compared to the same period last year. This appears to be the result of continued performance improvement combined with expectations for new business.

As of 12:21 PM on the 26th, Aton is trading at 44,000 KRW, up 22.56% from the previous trading day.

Aton is a security software development company established in 1999. It supplies financial app security solutions mainly to commercial banks such as KB Star Banking and NH Smart Banking. It is also the certificate service provider for the private electronic authentication service (PASS) of the three major telecommunications companies. Currently, it operates the LG Uplus PASS app. Once identity verification is completed, it is convenient to install other sites or apps. Besides vaccine pre-booking, the PASS certificate allows easy membership registration and login on major public apps such as the National Tax Service Hometax, Wetax, Ministry of the Interior and Safety Government24, Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission’s People’s Petition, as well as various banks and shopping malls. As of early November, the number of issued certificates is approximately 32 million, and affiliated institutions number about 400.

The company entered the KOSDAQ market in 2019. The public offering price was set at 43,000 KRW at the time of listing. Performance was sluggish after listing. Consolidated sales, which were 28 billion KRW in 2018, increased to 32.5 billion KRW in 2019 but decreased to 29 billion KRW last year. This year, performance is improving.

In Aton’s core business segment, fintech security solutions, new customers have expanded mainly in the financial sector. Sales growth driven by existing customers’ purchases of mobile OTP licenses has led the performance. The sales of the fintech security solution segment in the first half of this year reached 10.3 billion KRW, achieving 79% of last year’s sales (13.1 billion KRW).

The company expects to benefit from the increase in solution sales due to the digitalization of the financial sector and also from the MyData business to be implemented next year. An Aton official said, "As the financial sector transitions to digital, demand for authentication and security is increasing. The MyData business is scheduled to be fully implemented next year, and authentication certificates are required to conduct this business. We possess the certificate construction solution."

Along with this, Aton plans to proceed with an NFT-related security business through a recently established joint venture. As the authentication field is broadly expanding into the NFT sector through virtual assets, Aton aims to become the unrivaled leader in security and authentication by leveraging its technology and market preemption.

An Aton official said, "We are considering security and authentication services for NFTs and virtual assets related to artworks. This is because this area has not yet been regulated."

In September, Aton made a strategic investment in the joint venture 'Cardo' along with NH Nonghyup Bank, Hexlant, Galaxia Moneytree, and Korea Information & Communications to enter the digital asset market. Cardo is a custody company that provides reliable infrastructure for customers holding digital assets.

The service scope of the joint venture Cardo includes not only coins but also various tokenizable assets such as real estate and artworks. It plans to connect to new blockchain-based financial services targeting the MZ generation, including gaming and entertainment.

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