KT Alpha Achieves Record High Sales of 471.5 Billion KRW Last Year... Operating Profit Drops 64.6%

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Chun-han] KT Alpha announced on the 15th that its sales last year reached 471.5 billion KRW, a 35% increase compared to the previous year. This marks the highest sales record in the company's history. However, operating profit decreased by 64.6% to 4.2 billion KRW due to expanded investments in the commerce business.

Sales from the commerce business recorded 307.2 billion KRW, a 34.5% increase from the previous year. K Shopping secured channel competitiveness mainly through IPTV and achieved the highest transaction volume and sales since its launch, driven by rapid growth in mobile channels. Going forward, K Shopping plans to maximize the efficiency of its existing channels and secure growth by expanding mobile-based commerce, including simultaneous live shopping on mobile and TV apps.

The mobile gift commerce business, newly incorporated through the merger with KT M House in July last year, recorded sales of 32.1 billion KRW (based on the second half of the year), growing 26.6% compared to the same period last year. The mobile gift commerce business plans to further expand its No.1 market share in the B2B sector by enhancing the corporate mobile coupon platform Giftishow Biz and securing high-efficiency product brands, while also focusing on growth in major B2C channels such as Kakao.

Content business sales increased by 16.8% year-on-year to 43.8 billion KRW. Sales rose due to strong secondary rights sales of Korean films such as Minari and expanded contracts for providing rights to OTT platforms. The content business plans to actively respond to the expanding OTT market, including Netflix, Disney+, and Apple TV, by diversifying rights genres and making global rights acquisitions.

ICT business sales grew 6.1% year-on-year to 88.5 billion KRW. The ICT business will focus on supporting development for internalizing commerce DX technologies such as search and recommendation, discovering projects centered on platform-based new growth businesses, and expanding its own solution businesses including AI contact centers.

KT Alpha stated, “We plan to promote future businesses based on metaverse digital trading platforms and actively enter new commerce areas by introducing products that combine tangible and intangible goods of K Shopping with NFTs, thereby enhancing corporate value.”

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