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Kakao Q2 Net Profit Drops Nearly 90 Percent Despite Record Revenue

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2 sources · South Korea · 1 of them is linked to a state

Who reported this

  • Yonhap South Korea · Centre · State-affiliated · Cooperative; statutory national agency with state subsidy
  • The Korea Herald South Korea · Centre-right · Herald Corporation (Yeongpoong Group)

What the colours mean

  • Left
  • Centre-left
  • Centre
  • Centre-right
  • Right
  • A hatched block means the outlet is affiliated with, or controlled by, a state.

Political lean describes where an outlet sits within the politics of its own country. It is never a position on a single global scale.

Political lean is comparable inside one country and not across them, which is why the bar groups by country first. Publicly funded broadcasters are not marked as state-linked.

The owner of each outlet is listed as a matter of record, not as a judgement about the outlet.

Every source for this story reports from South Korea.

South Korean internet tech giant Kakao Corp. reported a sharp decline in net profit for the second quarter, falling 89.5 percent from a year earlier to 18 billion won, or 12.6 million US dollars. Despite this drop, the company achieved its highest quarterly operating profit and sales to date. Operating profit rose 49 percent to 277 billion won, while sales increased 3.5 percent to 2.09 trillion won.

These financial results include earnings from Kakao Games, which was effectively spun out to Japan's LY Corp. in May. The company's flagship platform division, encompassing its mobile payment service and ride hailing service, saw sales rise 17 percent to 1.23 trillion won. The content business experienced a slight increase of 1 percent, reaching 868.2 billion won in sales.

Looking forward, Kakao stated its intention to introduce an agentic artificial intelligence experience for daily tasks such as reservations and shopping. The company aims to establish this service as a sustainable growth engine.

How each side framed it

Centre
The center outlet presented the financial data neutrally, focusing on the contrast between the net profit drop and the record operating profit.
Centre-right
The center-right outlet provided a factual summary of the financial results without adding additional framing or commentary.

Sources

100% of the statements in this article were traced back to the source articles listed above.