South Korea’s platform giant Naver Corp. saw its second-quarter operating profit edge down 0.2 percent from a year earlier due to increased investments in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
Naver said in a regulatory filing on Friday that it raised 520.3 billion won ($366.28 million) in operating profit in the second quarter, down 0.2 percent from the same period a year ago, on sales of 3.39 trillion won, up 16.2 percent.
Net profit increased 41.6 percent to 704.3 billion won.
Naver’s revenue growth was driven by the application of AI across its core businesses, including advertising and commerce, as well as continued expansion of its global consumer-to-consumer (C2C) business.
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Operating profit declined slightly due to investments in AI infrastructure.
By business segment, revenue totaled 1.9 trillion won for the Naver Platform, 470.7 billion won for the Financial Platform, and 1.02 trillion won for the Global Challenge division, the company said.
Revenue from the Naver Platform rose 12.3 percent from a year earlier and 3.4 percent from the previous quarter.
Advertising revenue increased 7.5 percent, supported by AI-based optimization of ad placements and more advanced targeting capabilities.
Naver said AI accounted for more than 60 percent of its advertising revenue growth. The company’s newly launched AI Briefing Ads achieved a click-through conversion rate more than 30 percent higher than conventional search ads.
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Service revenue climbed 31.3 percent, driven by the expansion of the company’s commerce ecosystem through Naver Plus Store, its membership program, and enhanced N Delivery services.
Naver plans to expand deployment of its integrated offline payment terminal, Npay Connect, to accelerate its AI platform business for merchants while developing new revenue streams by combining online and offline data. It expects its AI factory project with Nvidia Corp. to begin generating revenue in the first half of next year.
Naver Chief Executive Officer Choi Soo-yeon said, “We recently formed a strategic partnership with Nvidia for the AI factory business, establishing a foundation that allows us to expand the business rapidly while minimizing the initial capital burden.”
Choi Soo-yeon added that they will leverage Nvidia’s ecosystem, including global large-scale customers, along with their own enterprise and public-sector customer base, to secure customers for the initial operating capacity in advance, generate meaningful revenue and profit at an early stage, and create a new growth engine in the global AI computing market.
