I will now turn it over to Kakao. Hello,
I'm Jeffrey from Kakao IR. Let's begin with the second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Today, I am joined by Shina Chung, the CEO, and Jaden Shin, the CFO. Please be reminded that the earnings results are consolidated estimates under the KIFRS basis and are subject to change upon the auditor's review. Also, forward-looking estimates are based on assumptions, so actual results may differ from figures included in today's presentation. CEO Shina will first explain Kakao's mid to long-term growth strategy, followed by CFO Jaden, who will discuss the key business achievements for the second quarter.
Hello, this is Shina, CEO of Kakao Corp. First of all, I understand the prevailing concerns of shareholders regarding recent challenges, challenging circumstances surrounding Kakao Corp.
It is a difficult situation, particularly as all employees of Kakao Corp are diligently focused on business reforms and AI innovation. Despite the challenging circumstances, the management team and all employees of Kakao Group, including myself, will work together to ensure that all services led by Kakao and its key affiliates continue to operate smoothly and hold up to their core values and responsibilities. As the CEO of Kakao, I am committed to fostering joint growth with our various stakeholders while focusing on the core aspects of our business. We will strive to solidify our foundations for sustainable long-term growth. First, I would like to briefly explain Kakao's consolidated financial results for Q2. Kakao's Q2 consolidated revenue was KRW 2,005 billion, representing a 4% growth year-on-year. Operating profit was KRW 134 billion, marking a 19% year-on-year growth.
At Kakao Corp., despite an unfavorable macroeconomic environment, the business messaging and advertising, and gifting and commerce, which are unique business models only implementable on KakaoTalk, continued their growth trajectory. This has once again demonstrated the robust fundamentals of our Talk Biz. Among our major affiliates, the positive impact of the financial restructuring carried out last year was evident in Kakao Entertainment and Kakao Enterprise as their contribution to profit improved. However, it is somewhat disappointing that the overall profit contribution from affiliates was particularly offset by the impact of the gap in new game release in Kakao Games and the strategic marketing expansion of Kakao in response to intensified competition in the Japanese webtoon market. Next, I would like to briefly discuss Kakao's long-term growth strategy. Currently, Kakao and its affiliates are working on clearly defining their respective core businesses.
Moving forward, we intend to drive growth by focusing on the essence of these core businesses. For Kakao, we have defined the core elements for future growth as KakaoTalk and AI. Starting in the second half, we will allocate company-wide resources to accelerate growth of Talk Biz and focus on new innovation through AI. First, as the core aspect of Kakao's future growth, we plan to expand and explore new mid- to long-term growth drivers in KakaoTalk, advertising, and commerce. Additionally, Kakao aims to establish a third revenue base for Kakao Talk Biz overall, following advertising and commerce. First, Kakao's advertising business will leverage its competitive advantage and nationwide reach and relationship-based service to launch differentiated branding display ad products in the second half of the year. Additionally, new business opportunities will be explored through the expansion of business relationships within KakaoTalk.
Kakao Biz Board, a unique product that delivers business messages alongside Kakao's mega traffic, stands out as a key offering that cannot be replicated by other platforms. However, it has been challenging to cater to advertisers with branding needs who prefer larger screens and highly visible formats. The demand from advertisers seeking to enhance brand awareness using KakaoTalk's mega traffic has been steadily increasing. It is estimated that approximately 40% of mobile advertising budgets are allocated to fulfilling these branding needs. In response, new branding display ad products will be introduced in the second half of the year to meet these advertisers' demand. The plan includes launching full-screen ad products that utilize the updated profile area in the Friends tab and dedicated brand spaces in Open Chatting tab, allowing brands to effectively deliver high-impact messages.
As these new products can provide advertisers with significant value in terms of raising brand awareness and creating a sense of trendiness, it is expected that budgets from advertisers with branding purpose can be effectively secured. In addition, we are planning to explore new monetization opportunities through the expansion of business relationship within KakaoTalk. It has been observed that many professionals and small business owners publicly share their KakaoTalk IDs through social media or blogs, indicating a strong desire to engage in business communication with customers within the platform. To address this, a new scene will be created where micro-influencers and small business owners can set up business profiles, making it easier for these profiles to be discovered within KakaoTalk. Currently, Kakao's advertising business is primarily centered around display ads and message ads targeting corporate demand.
As a well-structured context for users to search for various business profiles within KakaoTalk is established, it is anticipated that revenue from service targeting demands from individuals, such as freelancers or micro-influencers who are less sensitive to economic fluctuations compared to corporations, could become a new pillar of growth in the advertising sector. Continuing with Kakao's commerce business, the plan is to expand the context of gifting while also discovering new growth drivers outside the gift market through personalized discovery commerce. Talk Gift service has grown its revenue and transaction volume by strengthening its product lineup, which started with vouchers and expanded to delivery products and premium brand items. To accelerate the growth of the Talk Gift service once again, it is essential to broaden the context in which gifts are exchanged on the platform. Currently, the majority of transaction volume is concentrated around birthdays.
Instead of focusing only on birthdays, Kakao plans to expand gift exchanges for various events and situations. In addition to existing purpose-driven commerce context of Talk Gift, we plan to explore additional growth opportunities in the discovery commerce market. Currently, discovery commerce is actively conducted within KakaoTalk through the Shopping tab and Talk Channel. Starting in the second half of the year, we aim to enhance the Shopping tab by expanding personalized shopping creation areas. Moreover, there are plans to further refine personalized message marketing for the Shopping and Shopping Live Talk Channels. First, with the updated Shopping tab last year, users are provided with personalized shopping creations by gathering recommended products and promotional items from brands they added as friends in one place. This has led to a positive impact on, of connecting product discovery to purchases.
Therefore, this year, we plan to further enhance search and recommendation technologies based on purchase history to offer a more personalized commerce experience within the Shopping tab. Additionally, to increase the proportion of commerce transactions converted through shopping and shopping live Talk Channel messages, we plan to enhance targeting messages. Previously, the same Talk Deal products and promotional messages were sent to all Talk Channel friends. Going forward, we will use commerce data within KakaoTalk to deliver personalized shopping benefits and deals tailored to users' purchase histories and preferences. This will expand the scene where real-time discovery leads to purchases. Ultimately, based on the steady growth and the purpose-driven commerce of gift purchases, where Kakao holds a competitive advantage, we aim to expand our market share in the e-commerce sector by seeking new growth drivers through a hyper-personalized shopping curation in the discovery commerce space.
From a mid to long-term perspective, Kakao plans to enhance user engagement on KakaoTalk by offering chat features tailored to users' specific conversation purposes, while exploring new business opportunity beyond existing advertising and commerce, aligned with the essence and context of the platform. In the early stages of KakaoTalk service, most conversations were for everyday chats with acquaintances, but recently, the purpose for using the platform has became increasingly diverse, including fandom communities, activities, and real-time communication channels with small business owners with their customers. As useful chat features tailored to these various purposes are introduced, user engagement indicators, such as the number of active chat rooms and the volume sent and received messages, are expected to grow continuously.
For example, we are considering chat features that go beyond everyday conversations, such as marketing tools for small business owners to announce events to customers through open chat or conference functions for conducting large-scale lectures. If these such features prove to be significant business utility, there is potential to explore monetization opportunities through a subscription model for providing certain additional features. Currently, Talk's subscription-based services, including Emoticon Plus and Talk Drawer Plus , have already secured 4 million monthly subscribers. Although the absolute revenue from these services is smaller compared to advertising or commerce, we have shown significant growth potential due to their low sensitivity to economic fluctuations, despite the recent downturn in domestic economy. Moving forward, there are plans to explore various new subscription-based revenue streams, aiming to establish a steady revenue base within process that is less affected by economic cycles.... Moving on to Kakao's future growth engines, AI.
First of all, Kakao Corp established two new organizations related to AI, Kanana X , responsible for AI service development, and Kanana Alpha, which supports service development by providing the appropriate language model. Led by Kanana X and Alpha, Kakao Group will launch a cost-efficient AI service that is easily accessible to users and will actively explore monetization opportunities through AI innovation, rather than focusing on developing proprietary LLM. In the second half of the year, Kakao is preparing to introduce its first B2B AI service in the form of chat platform, where Kakao can show its distinctive competitiveness and its most capable offer. This service will integrate AI with Kakao's core strength and relationship-based communication, providing a distinctive offering that only Kakao can deliver.
Since KakaoTalk has more than 48 million users, including users who are not yet familiar with AI, to minimize AI hallucination impact and quickly respond to market reaction, the AI service will be launched as a separate application rather than being integrated in KakaoTalk. Within the second half of this year, we will have the opportunity to showcase some of these features to users and market participants in more detail. Additionally, we plan to test and refine the quality of the service through a closed beta test in the second half of the year and proceed with the official launch of the service. As mentioned earlier, AI is a crucial component of Kakao's long-term growth strategy. Despite the advent of AI, some things remain constant. The essence and the core of Kakao are rooted in relationships and communication, and that Kakao excels at creating user-friendly service.
This B2C AI service is just beginning. Kakao will pursue active innovation through AI with agility and make AI our new growth driver for the group. Lastly, under challenging circumstances, as CEO, I see it as my duty to enhance shareholder value by firmly establishing a foundation for Kakao's growth. In the second half, along with employees of Kakao Corp., we will work diligently to implement our planned strategies, laying the groundwork for long-term growth. Next, CFO Jaden will go over the key financial highlights.
Good morning, I'm Jaden, CFO of Kakao Corp. Since this is the first time I'm addressing the capital market, I will begin by sharing what I, as Kakao CFO, see as an important direction in terms of our financial strategy, and then we'll run through the results of the second quarter. First, the most important mission in my mind is efficient resource allocation across the organization. Through the lens of having a selective focus, we'll allocate resources efficiently behind driving innovation around KakaoTalk's Talk Biz and AI to power mid- to longer-term growth of the company. This will accompany rigorous monitoring, ensuring that we are keeping a good balance between growth and stability to make sure that Kakao's current financial soundness is intact. Second, we'll further boost cost efficiency. By actively identifying opportunities for efficient spending through a focused approach on priorities, we'll push forward with implementation measures expeditiously.
The focus will not be on short-term cost savings, but on building a sound cost structure from a longer-term perspective. We'll come back to the market to communicate details of the cost efficiency plan and its financial impact at the most opportune time. Lastly, as a CFO, I will place greatest focus on ROI and ROE, and will closely monitor these profitability indicators. I will perform my responsibilities as a CFO and not fall short of the expectation of the market by making sure that business priorities are set in an efficient manner based on such profit metrics. With this said, I'll now move on to the financial results of Kakao Corp and its major affiliates for Q2. Consolidated revenue was KRW 2.005 trillion, up 1% YOY and 4% QOQ.
Platform revenue was KRW 955 billion, flat QoQ and up 10% YOY. We'll provide a bit more color on TalkBiz, Kakao's main business and its Q2 performance. TalkBiz revenue was KRW 514 billion, up 7% YOY, but down 2% QoQ on the back of seasonality in the commerce business. Out of TalkBiz, ad revenue was KRW 307 billion, up 9% YOY and 10% QoQ. Following the previous quarter trend, the business messaging posted 16% YoY growth, driving the total ad market growth underpinned by its competitive advantage.
Business messaging in Q2 achieved record high quarterly revenue, and at the same time, number of active Talk Channel advertisers and total number of Talk Channel brands both reported 11% YOY growth, laying the foundation for sustained growth over mid to longer term horizon. Also, as advertisers consider ad efficiency more important, there is greater use of premium templates, which is used to send out personalized custom images and videos to customers, rather than just sending the same message to every Talk Channel friends. This actually drove sizable revenue growth versus the number of messages sent through the Talk Channel, and we expect this trend will sustain a double-digit growth for business messaging in the second half of the year. Next, KakaoTalk display ad revenue, which includes BizB oard and other DA revenue, reported a 5% YOY growth.
This board is KakaoTalk's flagship DA product, and despite sluggish domestic demand weighing down on economic recovery, there was greater revenue contribution coming from the Friends tab ad inventory, thus ending with YOY revenue growth of 2%. Other display ads, which includes BizB oard, which excludes BizB oard, reported 26% YOY growth, driven by chatting list ad, which was released together with the open chat tab last year. Although the share of other display ad is not significant, we are seeing a high rate of growth, and once the revenue from the new DA product, which is slated for release before the end of the year, comes through, we expect to see meaningful expansion of the share of other display ads within the Talk DA.
Next, Q2, total Kakao Commerce GMV was up 6% YOY, reporting KRW 2.4 trillion, with revenue coming in at KRW 207 billion, up 5% YOY, but down by 15% QOQ on seasonality. Seasonal event for gift giving fell on the national holiday this quarter, contributing less to GMV. But with an expanded premium lineup and platform differentiation, luxury brand GMV increased by 12% YOY, driving GMV for Talk Gift up by 5% YOY. For Talk Store, Q2 GMV was negative on back of lowest pricing policy and aggressive marketing by Chinese e-commerce platforms, which had an adverse impact on household, clothing, and consumer electronic categories.
As we move into the second half, to minimize the impact, we plan on offering both high quality and competitive pricing through our brand stores and run Talk deals for popular food and beauty brands, which Talk Store is good at. From the platform business, the portal revenue was down 2% YOY, but up 4% QOQ, reporting KRW 88 billion. Portal biz is focusing on solidifying the basis for a rebound by winning the big advertisers, including C-commerce and through stronger search ad partnerships. In the second half, we'll defend our bottom line through SA optimization, in line with our effort to drive gradual improvement in performance. Lastly, platform and others revenue, which includes mobility and pay, was up 18% YOY and 2% QOQ to KRW 354 billion.
On the increase in outdoor activities, there was a rise in demand for taxis, drivers for hire and parking, and in particular, a pronounced increase in the use of big parking lots, which led to 18% YOY growth in parking revenue. For Kakao Pay, there was double-digit YOY growth across all of its business domains, including payments, financial services, which for the first time drove a turnaround in quarterly EBITDA. Next, Q2 revenue for content, which is another pillar of Kakao's business, came in at KRW 1,050 billion, flat YOY and up 2% QOQ. First, story revenue for Q2 was KRW 216 billion, down 7% YOY and 5% QOQ. For the domestic market, we are using AI technology to enhance efficiency in marketing.
As a result, platform revenue increased versus last year, while user metrics trended upwards, yet again, solidifying the user base. In North America, to facilitate the new user inflow and user lock-ins, we strengthened the IP library for webtoon and web novels, endeavoring to build up a lineup of good titles across a variety of genre. We have selected some sources, good IPs, and also are also talking to Piccoma about content distribution strategies, so as to build an IP pipeline that will ensure growth for us and also for the creators together. Piccoma also ran active promotions in time for the peak season of Golden Week.
Built by such user spend activation, first half cumulative GMV surpassed JPY 50 billion, once again following the Q1 trend, and have proven strong competitiveness as a platform by ranking on top in terms of consumer spend out of all the apps in Japanese market, including game apps. Music revenue increased 6% YOY and 9% QOQ to KRW 511 billion. In Q2, new albums of IVE, RIIZE, and aespa grossed 1.7 million, 1.3 million, and 1.2 million record sales respectively, driving revenue and profit growth. Also, the in-house studio artists are going on global tours and selling out tickets across cities around the world. Lastly, media revenue was up 22% on year, but down 6% on quarter to KRW 90 billion.
reason why we see high YOY growth is due to the base effect from the production pipeline, which was concentrated in the second half of last year. Next is on operating expense. Q2 consolidated operating expense was KRW 1.871 trillion QoQ, and up 3% YOY. Labor cost was KRW 481 billion QoQ, on conservative hiring and up 2% YOY due to the impact of wage increase. Revenue-linked expense was KRW 797 billion, down 3% QoQ, due to a lower 1P revenue for talk gifts and decline in Kakao Enterprise cloud service-related costs. Compared to last year, due to higher talk gift revenue from direct sourcing and on higher revenue from performances and screen adaptations of Kakao Entertainment, which drove higher cost base, revenue-linked expense increased 2% YOY.
Please also note that the percentage of revenue-linked expense against Q2 revenue was 40%, which is down by 1.5 percentage point QQ. Outsourcing and infrastructure expense was KRW 196 billion, down 3% QQ and 5% YOY, on back of temporary decline in infrastructure fee expense due to the transfer of AI business divisions of Kakao Brain. Marketing expense was KRW 108 billion, increasing 21% QQ and 8% YOY, due to salient increase from content marketing on back of Kakao's strategic marketing expense deployed to counter the fierce competition in the Japanese market. Share of marketing expense against Q2 revenue was 5.4%, up by 0.9 percentage point QQ.
Depreciation and amortization was KRW 207 billion, up by 5% QoQ and 8% YoY, on ramp-up of Kakao's data center operations, new data center releases, and bigger investment into GPUs, servers, and AI equipment. All in all, Q2 consolidated operating profit was KRW 134 billion, with OP margin up 0.8 percentage point YoY, reaching 6.7%. Please also note that on parent basis, Kakao Corp's Q2 operating profit was one hundred and thirty billion won, with OP margin at 20.2%. Next, I will briefly run through non-operating revenue and expense line items. Other revenue was up KRW 38 billion QoQ to KRW 64 billion, while other expense increased nineteen billion won QoQ to KRW 65 billion on back of gains and losses from the sale of equity method shares.
Financial revenue was like QoQ at KRW 79 billion, and financial expense was KRW 75 billion on back of expense recognition related to non-controlling shares following disposition of assets invested under Kakao Ventures fund. While Kakao Bank reported sound net profits, some of the invested entities turned loss-making, driving equity method gain down KRW 4.6 billion QoQ to KRW 39 billion. Equity method loss narrowed KRW 16 billion QoQ, and recording KRW 11 billion, due to the overall performance improvement of the companies under the equity method. Next is on CapEx. Total CapEx for Q2 was KRW 170 billion, with KRW 140 billion investment for tangible assets and KRW 31 billion investment for intangibles. Total CapEx was up KRW 30 billion QoQ due to the continuing impact from acquisition of equipment and machinery, including network equipment, servers, and GPUs.
But compared to last year, due to the base effect of the data center investment, which was completed in Q4 of 2023, there was a decline of KRW 68 billion. Equity method losses decreased from KRW 16 billion to KRW 11 billion quarter-over-quarter, thanks to improved financial performance of the equity method company. Most of the earmarked investment has been implemented in equipment needed for initial operation of DA-1 data center, which was the main reason behind the rise in CapEx, is largely completed. Depending on the spend of AI business going forward, there may be an impact on total CapEx, but we project this year's CapEx to be lower than that of last year. Last but not least, a brief update on the shareholder return policy.
We are currently looking into ways to enhance the longer-term shareholder value through well-balanced capital allocation between shareholder return and investment, which is crucial for further growth.
We'll go through the BOD approval as swiftly as possible and come back to you to communicate Kakao shareholders return policy and way to enhance the shareholder value in, in the near future.
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 1. For cancellation, please press star 2, that is star and 2 on your phone. The first question will be provided by Jaemin An from NH Investment & Securities. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you very much for taking my question. I'm Jae-min Ahn from NH Investment & Securities. I just have one question. We've recently seen some news articles on a potential sale of Kakao's subsidiaries and your non-core businesses and your efforts behind improving your corporate governance.
Could you provide some color with regards to this topic?
Yes, hello, this is Shina. I will respond to your first question. As I've mentioned at the opening presentation, not just Kakao Corp, the parent, but all of our subsidiaries are at this point, clearly in the process of, defining what our business core and ethos is. And for Kakao Corp, the parent, we've defined our core as KakaoTalk and driving innovation powered by AI. Therefore, going forward, we will be funneling all of the corporate resources behind the growth of the Talk biz, refueling the growth that is, and finding new, growth engines powered by AI in order for us to secure a firm basis for long-term growth.
we have, we will define as non-core businesses, any business areas that will lack relevance to our KakaoTalk platform and the strength that it accompanies, as well as the big AI mega trend. Therefore, in the second half of the year, we will move quite expeditiously in implementing the efficiency plan. So at this point, since we are still in the process of ironing out the specifics and details, it will be difficult for me to share with you all of the details, but we will come back to you once we have the information ready.
Thank you. Next question?
The following question will be presented by Yeji Yoon from iM Securities. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you for taking my question. I'm Yeji Yoon from iM Securities. My first question is on your third quarter performance outlook. Also, if you could include the performance that you are seeing up to date into as of July, that is, regarding your advertisement and your commerce business, that would also be quite helpful. I see that the size of the losses that you are currently incurring from your new initiatives are going down. Would that also be the trend for the second half of the year? And also after the merger with Kakao Brain and its AI business, would like to understand as to the impact on the AI development cost.
먼저 three quarter 실적 전망에 대해서 간략히 좀 말씀드리겠습니다. 우선 Talk, Talk Biz 부분 three quarter 그 광고 비수기 영향이 있겠지만, 앞서 말씀드렸던 것처럼 비즈니스 메시지와 선물하기 중심의 그 견조한 성장세는 계속 이어질 것으로 지금 전망을 하고 있습니다. 그 플랫폼 기타에서는 KakaoPay의 경우에는 견조한 성장이 이어지는 가운데, 모빌리티의 같은 경우는 그 신규 택시 가맹점, 상, 가맹 상품이 이제 출시 직후인 점을 감안할 때에는 살짝 좀 three quarter 매출 전망은 불확실성이 좀 있겠다라고 말씀드리겠습니다.
Yes, I'm responding to your question about the third quarter outlook. If we first take a look at the Talk Biz, the advertisement market is going into a slow season in the third quarter, so there will obviously be some impact on our Talk Biz numbers. But if you look at our business messaging and Talk Gift, we are seeing a very solid growth being sustained. And for platform and others, robust growth from Kakao Pay is continuing. But on the other side, for our Kakao Mobility business, since we've just launched the new taxi franchise product, it's at this point quite hard to have visibility in terms of the third quarter outlook because of the uncertainties.
네, 그리고 콘텐츠 부분입니다. 콘텐츠 부분에서는 그 Kakao Entertainment Music 사업에서 아티스트 활동과 앨범 라인업이 하반기 대비에는 좀 상반기에 집중되어 있었고, 미디어 부분 역시 라인업 공개 시점에 따른 매출 인식 시기의 그 변동 가능성이 좀 존재하고 있습니다. 다만 지난해 단행한 사업 효율화로 수익성 구조가 건전해진 Kakao Entertainment의 이익 기여는 전년 대비 확대될 것으로 전망하고 있습니다. Kakao Games의 경우는 그 신작 라인업 공백의 영향이 third quarter에도 이어질 것으로 예상하고 있는 상황입니다.
Now, in terms of our content business, if you look at Kakao Entertainment's music business, particularly the artist activities and album release, most of these activities were concentrated in the first half as opposed to the second half of the year. And for the media business, depending on the timing of the release or the lineup of titles that we have, the timing for the recognition of the revenue is also going to vary. Now, having said that, we went through rationalization efforts, and hence we were able to improve the profit structure of Kakao Entertainment. It's become more healthier, and we are looking forward to greater profit contribution going forward. For Kakao Games, however, we think that the impact of lack of new game title release is going to continue on into the third quarter.
다음 비용 측면입니다. 우선 인건비 같은 경우는 기존의 보수적인 인원 운영 기조는 계속 이어지고 있어서 큰 폭의 변동은 없을 것으로 예상하고 있습니다. 마케팅비는 스토리 사업을 포함한 콘텐츠 부분을 중심으로 2 quarter 수준으로 유지될 것으로 전망을 하고 있습니다. 다만 B2C AI 서비스 런칭 준비와 자체 데이터 센터 구축의 영향으로 그 CapEx와 인프라 비용은 상반기 대비 하반기에 비교적 증가할 것으로 예상을 하고 있습니다.
On the cost side, if regarding the labor cost, we will continue to have a conservative headcount stance going forward, so there's not gonna be big of a fluctuation or change in terms of the labor cost line item. On the marketing spend side, including the story and the content, it's going to be more or less quite flat on a Q-over-Q basis. But because of the preparations that we are putting in for the launch of the B2C AI and the build out and the use of Kakao's own data centers, depreciation and infrastructure related fees could start to inch up. So in the second half of the year, the overall spend level may slightly edge up.
예, 다음으로 그 new initiative 관련, 그리고 AI 관련돼서 좀 말씀을 드리겠습니다. new initiative의 그 enterprise 같은 경우는 그 재무구조 개편 효과가 본격적으로 반영되면서, 그 하반기에는 전년 동기 대비 영업 손실이 대폭 개선될 것으로 전망을 하고 있습니다. 그 AI 시대에 들어서면서 AI를 활용한 필수 인프라로서의 그 클라우드 역할이 점점 중요해지고 있고, 중장기 관점에서 Kakao Enterprise의 그 cloud 역량을 글로벌 CSP 수준까지 올리면서, 그룹사들이 가격 경쟁력 있는 Kakao 클라우드로 전환이 가속화된다고 하면, 인프라 수수료 중 클라우드에 대한 비용 역시 전사 차원의 절감이 가능할 것으로 판단을 하고 있습니다.
Now, moving on to the question on the new initiatives. If you look at Kakao Enterprise, there's been a number of new initiatives under the umbrella, and we are now seeing the improvement or the positive impact from the realignment and the enhancement of the financial structure of Kakao Enterprise. Because of that, we think that as we go into the second half of the year, we will be able to see sizable improvement in terms of the operating loss of the company, and with the coming of the age of artificial intelligence, cloud is going to become ever more important.
From a longer-term perspective, if within Kakao Enterprise, if we are able to scale up the level of our cloud capabilities up to the level of the global cloud service providers, and if we are able to migrate our group affiliates into using Kakao's cloud, we believe that we will be able to make savings, with regards to the cloud-related costs.
... healthcare입니다. healthcare 같은 경우는, 아시는 것처럼 PaaS-TA 서비스와 데이터 플랫폼 사업이 그 기반을 확대하고 있는 구간인 만큼, 하반기에는 그 상반기 대비로는 영업 손실이 좀 확대될 것으로 예상되고 있는 상황입니다.
Now, for healthcare business, you know that our PaaS-TA service and data platform business is in an expansionary phase at this point. So in the second half of the year, operating loss may widen.
Yeah. 그리고 AI, 그 브레인 관련 답변입니다. 그 AI 경우는 아시는 것처럼 저희가 지난 유월 브레인 영업 양수를 완료하였고, 그 서비스 기획과 파운데이션 모델 개발이 별도로 있으면서 발생했던 법인 간의 거리가 사라지면서 AI 서비스 개발 속도가 좀 한층 빨라지고 있다고 말씀드릴 수 있습니다. 또한 그 모델 트레이닝부터 서비스 런칭까지 전체 프로세스에서 동일한 AI 철학과 윤리를 적용하고, 보다 안전한 데이터 처리가 가능해지는 것 같은 긍정적인 운영 시너지가 발생하는 동시에, 전반적인 비용의 효율화 기반 역시 마련되었다고 생각하고 있습니다.
Now, on AI, as you know, as of June, we have completed the asset transfer from Kakao Brain, and hence we were able to narrow the gap that previously existed between servicing, planning of AI, and foundational model development due to having separate entities. But after the merger and asset transfer, we are now able to speed up our AI service development. So from training the AI models up to the service launch, we now can apply a same and single AI ethics and AI philosophy, which will bring positive operational synergies, such as safer data processing, building up a solid basis for us to further save down our costs.
6월 그 브레인 영업 양수 이후에 그 이 분기 연결 실적 측면에서 재무적으로는 큰 영향이 없지만, 그 별도 실적에서는 인건비와 인프라 수수료 계정에서 약 KRW 60억 정도의 증가가 있었습니다. 그 참고로 이 분기 본사와 카카오 브레인을 합한 AI 관련 비용은 현재 KRW 300억 수준으로 파악이 되고 있습니다.
On a consolidated basis, there was no financial impact for Q2, but if you look at separate basis, we've seen about KRW 6 billion increase in the labor and infrastructure fee accounts. And in Q2, combining the Kakao Corp. and Kakao Brain, all of the AI related expenses amounted to around KRW 30 billion.
카카오의 중장기 성장을 위해서는 AI를 통한 혁신이 필수적이라고 판단되기 때문에, 그 본사 영업 양수도 이후 본격적인 비용 효율을 진행하고, 또 속도감 있는 AI 서비스 출시를 추진하면서 AI를 통한 수익화 가능성을 적극적으로 탐색하도록 하겠습니다.
We believe that in order for us to secure long-term growth for Kakao, innovation by AI is critical and essential. Therefore, after the asset transfer, we've been very swiftly undertaking cost efficiency measures and swiftly carrying out AI service launch, through which we will actively explore opportunities for monetization.
네, 시간 관계상 마지막 질문 받겠습니다.
Due to the time constraints, we will now take the final question.
The last question will be presented by Kumhee Han from UBS. Please go ahead with your question.
예, 안녕하세요. UBS 증권입니다. 저도 질문 두 가지 있는데요. 그 첫 번째는 그 최근에 기사에 보면 그 카카오톡 MAU가 좀 감소하고 있다라는 기사가 있는데, 혹시 내부적으로 보실 때는 그 user activity trend가 좀 어떠신지, 그리고 이용자 engagement가 감소해, 감소하는 거에 대해서 좀 management에서도 그 우려가 있으신지가 궁금하고요. 두 번째는 그 앞에 회사 관련된 전망을 말씀해 주셨는데, 혹시 업황, 시장 자체는 혹시 이 분기 트렌드가 어땠고, 하반기는 어떻게 보시는지도 궁금합니다. 감사합니다.
Thank you for taking my question. I'm from UBS. I would like to ask you two questions. Recently, I've read some news bites that, that said that KakaoTalk's MAU is trending downwards. What is the user engagement look like at this point? And do you internally also have concerns regarding the decline in the user engagement, and what does the user activity picture look like at this point? Second question is, you briefly talked about your second half outlook, but what about the overall market? What was the market like in the second quarter, and what do you think is going to be happening in the market in the second half of the year?
네, 이 질문은 제가 답변드리도록 하겠습니다. 먼저 카카오톡 MAU 하락의 기사에 대한 그 우려, 예, 예, 질문 주셨는데요. 일부 기사의 내용과는 다르게, 이 분기 카카오톡의 국내 월간 활성 이용자 수는 48,930,000명을 기록하면서 견조한 활동성을 유지하고 있습니다. 이용자 체류 시간 역시 지난해 톡 개편을 통해 친구 탭과 오픈 채팅 탭을 중심으로 크게 성장한 이후에, 올해 이 분기에도 여전히 견조한 수준이 유지되면서 플랫폼에 대한 로열티와 락인 효과는 변함없음을 확인했습니다.
This is Sheena again. I will respond to your question regarding the engagement of our users. Unlike what was mentioned by the article, if you look at our domestic monthly active users, it's 48,930,000. Since we've done the revamping on Talk, driven by the Friends tab and open chatting, we've seen a significant increase in the time spent by the users, and we see that trend remain quite robustly in the second quarter. The royalties and the lock-in effect of the users to our platform is staying intact. Now, I understand that because the MAU level is about 95% against the total population of Korea, there is a concern that people have with regards to, you know, whether we'll be able to further grow the traffic, whether that traffic growth will be capped.
But if you look at the activity measures for each of the tabs, you see that compared to the chatting tab, the other tabs still yield quite low level of user activity. Which means that there is quite big potential that still exists for us to further drive up the traffic. So in the second half of the year, what we will do is carry out service enhancements inside the Talk so that we can further enhance user convenience. And our objective, therefore, is to further drive up user traffic as well as user activity across all of the five tabs. We will select as key KPIs and monitor them very closely for each of the tabs. For instance, monitoring daily active users, number of frequency of their visits, and number of active chat rooms opened.
So against the users, user base that we lock in, we are going to provide them ample reason to come visit and use KakaoTalk other than the chat tab and increase their frequency of visit. At the same time, in so doing, we want to be able to explore additional business opportunities for our ad and commerce business. Moving on to your question about our outlook going forward. First, if you look at advertisements, in the first half of the year, as Chinese e-commerce platform players started making inroads into the domestic market, they set an impact of introducing new marketing budget. And Kakao was able to preemptively cater to their needs and was able to win that new marketing budget. Although it's only been one month since the start of the third quarter, we still have to wait and see a bit more.
However, we are continuously receiving advertisers' proposals and requests, and we will, as we've done in the past, be able to satisfy the needs and the requirements of these advertisers. But I also want to highlight the fact that aside from the increase in the advertisement budgets that we are seeing from the Chinese e-commerce players, which benefited our advertisement revenue, there's a greater impact that's coming from the advertisers' marketing budget cut following the domestic demand or domestic demand slump. If you look at Talk display ad-related trends, aside from Chinese platform advertisers, mostly across the board, we've seen in the industry year-over-year decline.
In light of the recent economic situation, we think that that trend is going to continue into the near future. 따라서 하반기에는 한정된 광고주들의 마케팅비를 더 많이 가져오려는 매체 간의 경쟁 강도가 더욱 심화될 것으로 예상하고 있습니다. So in the second half of the year, we think that the competition is going to further deepen, for different players are vying to gain that limited amount of advertisers marketing budget. 이에 따라 카카오 광고는 하반기 메시지 비즈니스의 고성장 지속을 기반으로 디스플레이 광고에서 새로운 브랜딩, 광고 상품들을 출시해, 출시하는 동시에 개인사업자나 마이크로 인플루언서들을 위한 새로운 광고 상품 출시를 위한 기반을 마련하면서 중장기 성장을 위한 초석을 다지는 작업들을 추진할 예정입니다.
So, for Kakao Ads for the second half of the year, supported by a very steep growth of our messaging business, we are going to be introducing a new branding display advertisement product and also come up with the products that caters to the needs of individual business operators or micro-influencers, which will help us lay a cornerstone for our future and mid to longer term growth. 이어서 커머스에 대해서 답드리자면, 작년 국내 이커머스 시장은 역대 최고치인 이백이십구조 원을 기록한 이후 점차 성장세가 둔화돼 가면서 이 분기 국내 온라인 쇼핑 거래액은 전년 동기 대비 약 구프로 증가했습니다. Now, moving on to commerce. If you look at domestic e-commerce market last year, it recorded a new historical high of KRW 229 trillion. Since then, we've seen slowing growth.
If you look at the second quarter's domestic online shopping GMV, it increased by around 9% versus the previous year. 국내 이커머스 플랫폼들의 거래 성장률 추이를 살펴보면, 극히 소수의 플레이어들만 높은 성장세를 기록하고 있고, 이를 제외한 나머지 플랫폼들은 중국 이커머스 플랫폼 진출 영향과 또 상위 사업자 중심으로 쏠림 현상이 심화되면서 역성장하고 있는 추세입니다. Now, if you look at the GMV growth trend for domestic e-commerce platform players, only handful number of companies are reporting high growth, and the rest are, at this point, actually reporting a negative growth rate due to the entrance of the Chinese e-commerce player, as well as the market skewing towards only a handful of top players. 하반기에도 전반적인 시장 성장세가 둔화되는 상황에서 중위권 플랫폼들의 수익성 악화로 경쟁 구도는 지속적으로 재편될 것으로 전망하고 있어서 시장 변화에 대한 예의 주시가 필요한 반기라고 할 수 있겠습니다.
And we think that in the second half of the year, overall market, growth or slowness, of growth is going to continue, which is going to hit the mid-tier platform players. It will hit their profitability, and we therefore think that the overall market competitive landscape is going to undergo certain changes. Therefore, we need to keep very close, monitoring or close tabs on how the market changes. 하반기에 카카오 커머스의 경우에는 시장 상황에 비교적 영향이 덜한 선물하기에서 더 맥락을 확대해 나가고, 선물하기를 제외한 커머스에서는 개인화 강화를 추진하면서 중장기 관점에서의 성장을 위한 기반을 마련할 계획에 있습니다. Now, for the Kakao Commerce business, in the second half of the year, we are going to be expanding the occasion and the context under which, gifting will take place, as we consider gifting as having less market sensitivity.
In terms of the other commerce domains, excluding the Kakao Gift, we're going to focus on personalization so that we can build a foundation for mid to longer term growth.
네, 이상으로 2024년 2분기 카카오 실적 발표를 마치도록 하겠습니다. 참여해 주신 분들 감사합니다.
With that, I would like to now wrap up the second quarter 2024 earnings conference call by Kakao. Thank you very much to everyone for joining us this morning.