Naver's 2024 Revenue Hits ₩10 Trillion, A First for Internet Firms

Naver has finally surpassed the dream milestone of 10 trillion won in annual revenue in 2024. Setting an unprecedented milestone in the history of domestic internet platforms, it has heralded the dawn of a new era. It continued its unstoppable growth in the last quarter (Q4). Revenue increased by 13.7% year-on-year to 2.8856 trillion won, and operating profit surged by an impressive 33.7% to 542 billion won, significantly improving profitability. In particular, the operating profit margin rose by 2.8 percentage points to 18.8%, demonstrating solid management efficiency. Building on this solid foundation, Naver's total annual revenue for 2024 was tallied at 10.7377 trillion won, and operating profit at 1.9793 trillion won, showing remarkable year-on-year growth rates of 11.0% and 32.9% respectively. Operating profit and adjusted EBITDA increased for 8 and 9 consecutive quarters, respectively, proving that the company is on a stable growth trajectory. The main drivers of growth were undoubtedly the Search Platform and Commerce divisions. They recorded quarterly growth of 14.7% and 17.4% respectively, leading overall performance, and annually, the Search Platform achieved the highest revenue at 1.0647 trillion won. The Cloud division, a future growth engine, demonstrated strong potential with an overwhelming growth rate of 41.1% year-on-year, fully playing its role as a new growth driver. In detail, Commerce achieved a gross merchandise volume (GMV) of 13.2 trillion won in Q4, driven by the launch of Naver Plus Store and strengthened membership partnerships. The FinTech division also recorded 19.3 trillion won in Q4 payment volume, maintaining a high growth rate of 18.3%. Despite the challenging environment of excluding Naver Z from consolidation, the Content division maintained solid growth through webtoon content integrated with AI technology and an increase in paid subscribers for its camera app. Cloud's performance improvement was led by the growth of Neurocloud and LINE WORKS, as well as the expansion of its digital twin business in Saudi Arabia. Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon emphasized that "2025 will be a crucial period for fully implementing the 'On-service AI Strategy' across all Naver services," presenting a vision to enhance Naver's unique differentiated competitiveness by advancing its platform based on AI technology and creating new value and business opportunities. She added that through the Naver Plus Store app, set to launch in the first half of the year, Naver will expand the search-centric shopping experience to a personalized exploration-centric one, providing users with a more immersive and powerful shopping experience. With this achievement of 10 trillion won in revenue, Naver has opened a new chapter in Korea's IT history and is expected to further solidify its status as a leader in the upcoming AI era.