Naver will launch a subscription service next month and begin beta testing of 'merchant solution' that assists sellers with the whole online commerce process. Among many new businesses that account for the majority of sales, Naver is a paving the way to accelerate the growth on commerce business.
In a conference call on the 22nd, Naver CEO Seongsuk Han said, “Starting with a regular subscription in August, Naver will continue to discover and provide solutions for ordering processes in order to support various purchasing methods such as regular payments and rentals.”
Prior to Naver’s subscription serivce, Kakao launched ‘Gudok (Subscription) On', a subscription service that allows to use daily necessities and home appliances on Kakao Talk in June. A competition between the two companies is expected to begin in the subscription service sector as well.
Merchant Solution will begin the beta testing in the second half of this year and will release official services in 2022. Naver aims to provide sellers with an integrated solution that enables purchasing, payment, customer advertising, data analysis, and business management by 2023.
Naver's strategy is to strengthen its commerce business. Naver's four new businesses are commerce, fintech, contents, and cloud, and their sales exceeded 50% of the total for the first time in the second quarter of 2021. Among the new businesses, commerce had the largest sales at 365.3 billion won.
CEO Han said, “In the second quarter, when the impact of the spread of COVID-19 was relatively small, key indicators such as smart store transaction and number of new subscribers remain higher than pre-COVID19.The digital transformation of sellers and users is continuing through the Naver’scommerce platform.”
Naver announced that it recorded sales of 1.66 trillion won and operating profit of 335.6 billion won in the second quarter of 2021.
Sales in the second quarter rose 30.4% year-over-year (YOY) and 11.0% quarter-on-quarter (QOQ), which are record highs due to excellent performance of all business sectors.
Sales by business division are △Search platform 826 billion won, commerce 365.3 billion won, fintech 232.6 billion won, contents 144.8 billion won, and cloud 94.9 billion won.
Display sales increased by 48.0% YOY due to the growth of performance-based advertising. Commerce grew 42.6% YOY and 12.6% QOQ.The number of Naver’s brand stores expanded to 450, a five-fold increase compared to the same period last year, and Naver’s shopping live sales also increased 17-fold compared to the same period last year.
Fintech increased by 41.2% YOY and 11.0% QOQ due to expansion of external partners and growth of affiliated malls. The amount of Naver Pay payments in the second quarter was 9.1 trillion won, 47% increase from the same period last year.
Contents sales grew 28.2% YOY and 10.7% QOQ, due to growth of Webtoons and Snow.Snow, which introduced advertisements in the camera service and monetized ZEPETO, also increased sales more than doubled compared to the same period last year.
Naver will add games to the metaverse platform ZEPETO in the second half of the year. Naver plans to increase the number of creative tools that users can access within ZEPETO, such as live broadcasting, animation, and karaoke.
Sales of 'Naver Cloud Platform' (NCP) increased 77% YOY. Naver plans to overtake the testing next-generation business (B2B) solutions, such as the super giant artificial intelligence (AI) model 'Hyper CLOVA' and 'Cloud Robot System’ in the second half of the year.
By Staff Reporter Siso Kim
(siso@etnews.com)