Sales for the first three months of this year reached 2.79 trillion won (US$1.99 billion), up 10.3 percent from the same period last year, backed by steady growth across its diverse business sectors despite intensifying competition and challenges in emerging technologies including artificial intelligence (AI).
Operating profit jumped 15 percent to 505.3 billion won, but net profit tumbled 23.8 percent to 423.7 billion won.
The search-related division, which takes the lion's share of the company's business sectors, saw an 11.9 percent surge in revenue to 1.01 trillion won, driven by AI-optimized advertising.
The commerce unit followed with a 12 percent growth on-year, with on-platform transaction volume increasing by 10.1 percent.
The fintech division saw an 11 percent increase, processing 19.6 trillion won in payments through its app Naver Pay, up 17.4 percent from the previous year.
"Naver secured unmatched competitiveness by building an ecosystem that AI cannot replace, connecting our own content and data," said CEO Choi Soo-yeon.
Addressing concerns about AI's impact on the market overall, Choi commented that, based on internal data, there were no adverse effects, with traffic continuing to rise for business-related queries where the company maintains relative strength, compared to market rivals.
Naver also revealed plans to launch a service in partnership with grocery delivery app Kurly in the second half of the year, further strengthening its recently launched separate shopping platform.
reporter
Kim Dong-young
davekim0807@ajupress.com
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