Naver to boost content, shopping businesses in Q4 via Shinsegae alliance

South Korea’s top portal operator Naver Corp. plans to beef up its shopping and content businesses in the second half of this year, backed by collaborative efforts with the country's retail giant, Shinsegae Group. 

During an earnings call on July 22, Naver's Chief Executive Han Seong-sook identified grocery shopping service as a top priority for the Naver-Shinsegae alliance and announced that in the fourth quarter, Shinsegae's supermarket chain E-mart Inc.'s products will be available on Naver Shopping, the country's largest online shopping platform.

This means that Korean consumers, who must currently use Shinsegae's e-commerce platform SSG.COM to order E-mart products, will also be able to use Naver to buy E-mart groceries. Naver has a monthly active user base of 40 million, about 10 times that of SSG.COM.

According to Han, this will help enhance both online and offline commerce synergy for the two companies. Earlier in March, Naver and Shinsegae inked a 250 billion won ($217.5 million) share swap agreement to strengthen their footing in the increasingly competitive e-commerce market.

Naver also plans to expand its luxury goods shopping business by setting up brand stores for Shinsegae Department Store's luxury brands on the Naver shopping platform.

Other updates for Naver's shopping segment include launching a business solution that allows Naver sellers to offer subscription products to customers alongside rolling out long-term payment plans and rental services within the year.

Naver will also firm up its content operations by setting up a 100 billion won fund dedicated to its intellectual property (IP) business.

According to CEO Han, Naver will select popular IPs from its storytelling platforms such as Wattpad and Naver Webtoon to make adaptations and increase the profitability of the company's IP business.

Meanwhile, Naver's second-quarter earnings hit an all-time high, logging revenue of 1.7 trillion won ($1.5 billion) and operating profit of 335.6 billion won, up by 30.4% and 8.9% from the year-earlier period, respectively.

Naver Shopping's commerce business was the driving force behind the company's record-high Q2 earnings, with commerce sales reaching 365.3 billion won, up by 42.6% compared to the year-earlier period. 

The portal operator's fintech sales also posted strong growth, logging 232.6 billion won, a 41.2% increase from the previous year. Naver Pay's transaction volume in Q2 reached 9.1 trillion won, up by 47% compared to the year-earlier period.

Write to Min-ki Koo at kook@hankyung.com
Danbee Lee edited this article.