South Korean search giant Naver has recorded strong earnings in the second quarter this year, posting 1.66 trillion won in sales and 335.6 billion won in operating income, which marked an increase of 30.4% and 8.9%, respectively, from the same time period a year ago.
It is Naver’s best quarterly performance to date in terms of both sales and operating income.
The South Korean company saw growth across the board; its search, commerce, financial services, content, and cloud business units all recorded double-digit growth from a year prior.
Naver said local stores increased their usage of its online shopping platform, while its mobile payment service Naver Pay recorded 9.1 trillion won in transactions during the quarter. Meanwhile, both its commerce and financial services business units recorded over 40% sales growth year-on-year, the company noted.
During the conference call for the quarter, Naver CEO Han Seong-sook said the company plans to form a 100 billion won fund that will invest in content. The fund will support content has proven to be popular on the storytelling platform Wattpad, which was acquired by Naver for $600 million earlier this year.
During the second-quarter results presentation, Han also addressed the issue surrounding the death of one of its employees, who committed suicide in May after allegedly being bullied by senior executives and overworked.
“It will be our foremost priority in the second half of the year to address areas in which we are insufficient, including the forming of a healthy corporate culture,” the CEO said during the conference call. Previously, the company’s board said it would form a task force dedicated to creating a new management structure by the end of the year.
Earlier this month, Naver’s labour union said it planned to file a petition to the National Pension Service, Naver’s largest shareholder, to file for a motion to fire the senior executive, who has been named as former COO Choi In-hyuk, that allegedly held the most responsibility.
Choi stepped down from his post as COO of Naver following the incident, but he has kept his senior posts in other affiliates of the South Korean company. Naver has so far claimed his posts in other companies were irrelevant to the incident.
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