Naver's Q4 Earnings Hint at a Drop
Webtoon revenue drops to a new low.
It’s February which means we’ll start seeing Q4 earnings reports from webtoon platforms in Korea. Naver’s earnings results cover the entirety of the company and only offer a peak at WEBTOON’s numbers as those will be reported on March 3rd at 4:30 EST.
But, the data in Naver’s report is often a good indicator of what’s to come and… well, it doesn’t look great for WEBTOON’s earnings report.
For a summary of Naver’s divisions and what their businesses consist of, check out the Q3 Earnings Report.
And if you’re interested in looking at Naver’s Q4 Earnings report yourself, you can find that here.
Everything is Looking Green, Except…
The earnings report summary shows massive growth in Naver’s commerce division. Honestly, it’s not surprising considering how quickly Naver has grown into an e-commerce juggernaut after refocusing their massive traffic into online shopping malls.
And while the search platform is stagnating a bit, that’s likely because Naver essentially owns the market in Korea without having much more room for growth.
Point of fact, there’s only one division that showed a massive drop QoQ (quarter-on-quarter).
The Webtoon Market is Stagnating
The Contents division at Naver is comprised of Webtoon, SNOW, and a catch-all category of Others. SNOW is Navers version of Snap featuring multiple filters, many of which are powered by AI.
