[Click eStock] "NCSoft, No Need to Be Sensitive to New Release Delay"

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Jung-yoon] Korea Investment & Securities maintained a buy rating and a target price of 450,000 KRW for NCSoft on the 24th, stating that after Project TL, four new mobile game titles are expected to be released in 2023, with additional new PC and console titles launching in 2024.

NCSoft's operating profit in the second quarter of this year was 123 billion KRW, a 9% increase compared to the same period last year, but it was sluggish. The average daily revenue of Lineage W in the second quarter was 2.46 billion KRW, down 40% from the previous quarter. Additionally, marketing expenses increased to 60 billion KRW, which was a major cause. The announcement that the release schedule for the new intellectual property (IP) Project TL, initially expected in the second half of this year, has been postponed to the first half of next year also negatively affected the stock price along with the poor performance.

Jung Ho-yoon, a researcher at Korea Investment & Securities, explained, "The delay in the release of Project TL had a significantly negative impact on the stock price," but added, "However, rather than being sensitive to short-term schedule delays, I believe the resulting stock price decline should be seen as a buying opportunity."

He continued, "A delay of 3 to 6 months only causes a difference in the timing of reflecting new title sales and is not a fundamental factor damaging corporate value," and said, "PC and console MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) have steady user demand, but the development difficulty is high and the development period is long, so there are not many companies developing them."

He also noted, "Project TL is a genre where an imbalance between supply and demand occurs," and added, "Attention should be paid to the fact that it is more likely to achieve success exceeding market expectations than to be delayed in release."

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