From Shareholder Returns to First Profits and Sovereign AI... The Company on a Winning Streak

Maximizing profitability through an OSMU strategy
"Aiming to become the global standard in adult education"

There is a startup that brought out a shareholder return policy first, even before announcing its annual earnings last December. In January this year, it passed the first screening stage of a government-led national artificial intelligence (AI) flagship project, and earlier this month it announced that it had achieved record-high earnings and turned a profit for the first time since its founding. This is the story of the edutech company Day One Company.

In an interview with The Asia Business Daily on the 19th, Lee Kangmin, CEO of Day One Company, evaluated these achievements by saying, "Achieving three major milestones at the same time proves that our business model remains valid even in the challenging market and policy environment of adult education content," and expressed his ambition by adding, "We will grow not only in scale but also into an education company with global influence."

Lee Kangmin, CEO of Day One Company. Day One Company

The turnaround just one year after listing

Day One Company was listed on KOSDAQ in January 2025 under the so-called "Tesla requirements" (special listing for companies without realized profits). In the early phase after listing, the company faced market concerns due to put-back option issues and a falling share price. However, a turnaround came within a year. On a consolidated basis for 2025, it posted revenue of 123.9 billion won and operating profit of 4.6 billion won, marking its best performance ever. What particularly drew attention was that, even before announcing the earnings, the company unveiled a shareholder-friendly policy to return at least 30% of net income to shareholders over the next three years (2026–2028).

Lee said, "We became convinced that, starting from the third quarter of 2025, we had entered a structural inflection point where we secured qualitative stability in earnings beyond mere topline growth." He added, "The honest answer for a share price recovery lies in solid earnings, tangible actions to enhance shareholder value, and active communication." According to him, the shareholder return policy was optimized after thoroughly reviewing various return policies and models under a shared awareness among executives and employees that such policies are a duty of a listed company.

The profitability improvement that made this policy possible is backed by an OSMU (one-source multi-use) strategy. The company actively leverages the education content it has accumulated and validated in the B2C (business-to-consumer) market to expand into B2B (business-to-business), B2G (business-to-government), and global markets, while minimizing additional costs in this expansion process and thereby boosting profitability. Although producing a single piece of B2C content entails a heavy cost burden, the company explains that it has maximized the asset value of this content by reusing it in corporate, public, and overseas markets. Lee said, "The contribution margin in our B2B and B2G segments is currently over 60%," adding, "The company-wide contribution margin also rose from 32.4% in 2022 to 48% in 2025."

Lee Kangmin, CEO of Day One Company. Day One Company

The core value is 'AI literacy'

Day One Company is part of the Upstage consortium participating in the government's recently promoted "sovereign AI foundation model development project." This consortium passed the first-stage evaluation in January this year and advanced to the second stage, in which two final teams will be selected at the end of the year. Within the consortium, Day One Company is the only partner dedicated exclusively to AI literacy education.

Lee assessed that the level of AI utilization in Korea still largely remains at simple question-and-answer use. Although the technology is rapidly advancing, he analyzed that it has not yet reached the stage where it is effectively linked to real improvements in work processes and productivity. In response, the company has adopted "AI literacy education"—the capability to use AI to generate tangible results in day-to-day work—as its core value, instead of offering "AI education" focused merely on explaining basic AI concepts and functions.

Day One Company's role within the consortium is also aligned with this direction. The company is collaborating on advancing the AI model "Solar" by sharing with the consortium the user feedback and work-based learning data accumulated in its education operations. Lee said, "This project is a process of expanding our accumulated experience into a national-level initiative," and added, "We aim to set the standard for AI utilization education."

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