Good morning and good evening. Thank you all for joining the conference call for the SOOP earnings results. This conference will start with a presentation followed by a Q&A session. If you have a question, please press star and one on your phone during the Q&A. Now, we will begin the presentation on SOOP's first quarter of fiscal year 2026 earnings results.
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Good morning. This is Jiyeon Kim, Head of IR at SOOP. Let me begin with our Q1 2026 earnings presentation. I will first go over our key business highlights and financial results, and then we'll open the floor for Q&A with our CEOs and CFO.
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In the first quarter, we saw a temporary adjustment in some revenue metrics. However, with key triggers such as account integration, the resumption of in-app purchases, and the return of major streamers, we expect platform revenue to recover starting the second quarter.
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First quarter revenue was KRW 106 billion, down 9% quarter-over-quarter, and relatively flat year-over-year at around 2%.
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Platform revenue was KRW 74 billion, down 5% quarter-over-quarter and 13% year-over-year. The virtual category continued to grow solidly, while other categories showed an overall adjustment.
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Advertising revenue was KRW 30.5 billion, down 18% quarter-over-quarter, but up 40% year-over-year, showing solid annual growth. Platform ads declined sequentially, and content ads also decreased quarter-over-quarter but continued to grow year-over-year.
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Let me move on to operating expenses. Operating expenses were KRW 84.8 billion, down 1% quarter-over-quarter and up 6% year-over-year. Variable costs such as payment and ad commissions decreased, while content production costs increased due to higher investment. Fixed costs remained stable overall, although some costs related to broadcasting rights and network usage increased. Overall, we maintain cost discipline while continuing strategic investments.
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Operating profit was KRW 21.2 billion, down both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. This was mainly due to revenue adjustments and increased content investment. Operating margin remained at around 20%.
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Net income was KRW 22.5 billion, down 21% quarter-over-quarter and 4% year-over-year. The overall trend is similar to operating profit.
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Please refer to the materials for details on the balance sheet. This concludes our presentation, and we will now take questions.
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Now, Q&A session will begin. Please press star one, that is star and one, if you have any questions. Questions will be taken according to the order you have pressed the number star one. For cancellation, please press star two, that is star and two on your phone.
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Currently, there are no participants with questions. Please press star one, star and one to give your question.
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Currently, there are no participants with questions. We will wait for a second until there is another question.
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The first question will be provided by Eun-jung Shin from DB Securities. Please go ahead with your question.
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We think that increasing the number of the users within our platform and trying to expand our platform is one of the ways to grow our business. Another way is to do more partnerships with lots of companies who could benefit from the partnerships. In order to expand our partnership, one of the projects was with Nexon, which was done on April 27th. We have started to do account integration within Nexon. For Nexon users, they can get the gaming playing experience from their website. If they like the game, they can come on to SOOP website and see the streamers who do broadcasting using the games. By doing so, we believe that those people will do lots of activities on our platform and will do a lot of economical activities. We could benefit from their activities on our website. We believe that those users would also come back and forth from Nexon website and our website to do more activities in the future. We have also handed out lots of Nexon cash and lots of gifts exceeding the limit on the first day, and it is gaining a lot of attention. We think that not only through media marketing, we believe that this kind of activities would increase the number of users and the number of fandom-based economy to grow both on Nexon and SOOP.
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Currently, there are no participants with questions. Please press star one, star and one to give your question.
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Currently, there are no participants with questions. We will wait for a second until there is another question.
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Currently, there are no participants with questions. Please press star one, star and one, to give your question.
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If there are no further questions, we will now conclude the Q&A session and today's earnings conference call. Once again, thank you to all our investors for joining SOOP's earnings call. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to our IR team at any time.