[Click eStock] "Uma Musume Starts Freshly... Kakao Games Target Price Maintained"

[Asia Economy Reporter Myunghwan Lee] Hana Financial Investment announced on the 22nd that it maintains a buy rating and a target price of 80,000 KRW for Kakao Games. This is due to the expectation of the success of the new game "Uma Musume," which the company released on the 20th.

Hana Financial Investment forecasted that the new game Uma Musume is expected to be successful in Korea as well, given that it has proven its gameplay by generating over 1 trillion KRW in annual sales in Japan. However, they added that it is a bishoujo (beautiful girl) genre game, which has not performed very well in Korea.

Uma Musume ranked first in popularity and sales on the App Store on its release day, the 20th. However, since it took some time to compile the App Store rankings on the release day, market concerns about the game's success were excessive, causing the stock price to drop by more than 10% at the close on the 20th. But after the market closed, Uma Musume appeared in the download and sales rankings, and the stock price recovered on the 21st.

Hana Financial Investment believes that the excessive volatility of Kakao Games' stock over the past two trading days reflects market anxiety. They explained that to determine a definitive sales scale, it is necessary to observe the sales trend on the Google Play Store, which has a larger sales volume and higher reliability due to weekly cumulative data. Hana Financial Investment estimated Uma Musume's average daily sales in the third quarter to be 1 billion KRW.

Yoon Yeji, a researcher at Hana Financial Investment, said, "In addition to Uma Musume, Kakao Games is preparing to release three major new titles in the second half of this year," and added, "As more detailed information about the new titles is disclosed, there is ample room to raise the (daily sales) estimates."

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