Good morning everyone. This is Jason Lee, Head of IR at NCSOFT. Thank you for participating in the NCSOFT Earnings Conference call for the second quarter of 2025. We have Co-CEO BM Park and CFO Willie Hong joining us for today's conference. Let me begin with the financial highlight.
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Q2 sales totaled KRW 382.4 billion, up 6% QoQ and 4% YoY due to the increase in sales across key PC and mobile games.
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Operating profit rose by 189% QoQ and 71% to KRW 15.1 billion, driven by higher sales. Pre-tax income and net income swung to a loss due to lower foreign currency related gains attributable to a QoQ and YoY drop in the exchange rate.
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Moving on to sales by game in Q2, sales from both mobile and PC online games increased quarter over quarter and year over year.
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First, Q2 mobile game sales came in at KRW 219 billion, up 6% from the previous quarter.
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S ales rose 7% QoQ and 13% YoY, driven by the title's 8th anniversary update, once again showing that the title's lifecycle is still expanding.
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Sales rose 27% QoQ and 13% YoY, supported by its steady performance in Korea and its Southeast Asia launch on May 20.
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Lineage W sales fell 10% from the previous quarter as the game entered a period of downward stabilization after two consecutive quarters of Q2.
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PC online game sales were KRW 91.7 billion, up 10% QoQ and 6% YoY by strong performances of Lineage 2, Aion, and Blade and Soul.
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Royalty sales fell 6% QoQ to KRW 42.3 billion as the boost from Throne and Liberty's global release tapered off and Lineage M's royalty sales declined
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in Q2. Overseas and sales together made up 36% of total sales.
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Now turning to operating costs,
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in Q2 operating costs totaled KRW 367.3 billion, up. 3% QoQ and 2% YoY.
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Labor costs were KRW 190.8 billion, up 2% QoQ due to higher valuation of stock price-linked long-term incentives and up 1% YoY compared to the same period last year, which saw a one-off decrease in long-term incentive reserves.
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Marketing expenses came to KRW 23.4 billion, up 75% QoQ and 35% YoY, reflecting major updates and regional expansion for live games as well as the start of marketing activities for Aion 2.
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Depreciation expenses totaled KRW 24.7 billion, down 2% QoQ and 11% YoY. Variable costs and other expenses were KRW 128.4 billion, down 1% QoQ and up 1% YoY.
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Good morning everyone. This is CFO Willie Hong. Jason just shared the financial highlights for the second quarter of 2025, but before we move on to the Q&A session with our Co-CEO BM Park, I'd like to give you a briefing of the key direction of our company.
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In our Q1 earnings call, we announced our top-line growth strategy focusing on generating steady sales from legacy IPs and additional sales from new title releases along with our sales guidance for 2026.
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Through our Q2 earnings, we were able to reaffirm the strength of our legacy IPs. Lineage 2M expanded its service into Southeast Asia and delivered remarkable growth, while PC Blade and Soul, Neo, and Aion Classic have also been posting solid performances as they ramp up their global activities. We believe our strategy of strengthening the foundation of our legacy IPs through efforts such as regional expansion has been executed successfully.
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We will continue to expand the value of our legacy IPs in 2026 through regional expansion through release of Lineage M and Lineage 2M in China and Lineage W in Southeast Asia.
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That was briefing about our regional expansion efforts and now moving on to our new title releases as our flagship MMORPG, Aion 2 has kicked off marketing activities ahead of its launch in Korea and Taiwan in Q4, anticipation is gradually building around the title's success.
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Starting with Aion 2's launch in Q4, we plan to release seven new titles in 2026, including Breakers, Time Takers, LLL, and four spinoff games evenly spaced throughout the year quarter by quarter.
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On top of the stable performance of our legacy IPs driven by efforts such as the regional expansion mentioned earlier and sales growth, the multiple help us fully achieve the 2026 sales guidance of KRW 2 trillion to KRW 2.5 trillion that our Co-CEO BM Park mentioned in our previous earnings call.
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On top of these organic measures, we have been devising strategies for inorganic measures such as to move into new genres to secure new growth engines. As part of this effort, we plan to actively pursue our mobile casual game business initiative. Since securing mobile casual games is considered a key strategy for NCSOFT to reach the global mass market, we will continue to explore relevant M&A and investment opportunities. We're also developing a strategy that leverages. NCSOFT's own AI technology to drive advanced business initiatives in this space, and we will share more details about our plans soon.
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With that, we ask for your continued interest and support as we work towards achieving the company's strategic goals. We will do our best to deliver more positive news. Thank you.
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. The first question will be provided by Jung-Bum Kim from Kiwoom Securities. Please go ahead with your question.
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Thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions beyond financial highlights regarding Aion 2. The use regarding Aion 2 has been communicated with the external audience and I think the interest is going higher and as a result, I was wondering what kind of impact this project is making to the morale of the teams within the HQ, including other teams, and also impact your recruitment of talent from outside. Mr. BM Park, since your appointment one and a half years ago, I was wondering how your business philosophy and management is reflecting the company's performance and how is this affecting the organization. Thank you.
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Regarding your question about Aion 2, we are confirming the confidence within our company and externally. Just like Squid Game on Netflix has garnered huge popularity within the global audience and that led to the interest in Korean content, we believe that if Aion 2 acquires a lot of attention and good feedback from global audiences, this will positively impact our games that will be released next year. Although we haven't disclosed yet, we have seen a lot of good opportunities regarding investment and publishing this year compared to last year and we are currently narrowing down the list. I think that will also affect our company more positively. I believe that user feedback around Aion 2 is the key of our success and based on the testing results, we are cautiously optimistic about the title and we will make sure that our business model will have also positive impact on our game.
For your second question, starting from the end of last year and early this year, we have been establishing the philosophy which means that we give more independence and responsibility to our game teams within our company and also our partner studios. On top of that, we are trying to have a data-driven testing approach and already we have formed a gameplay review committee conducting FGTs and CBTs and based on these results we make a decision whether we drop the games or continue to develop our games. We are also preparing a technical side of reviews as well. Unlike our past, we ask for our teams to submit more accurate production plans and continue to have regular management of their progress. We continue to monitor their game quality and also the progress of the development and we think that more positive outcomes are seen already this year.
Currently, there are no participants with questions. Please press star one and one to give your question.
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While we are waiting for other questions, I'm going to talk about the initiatives that we will be taking for the end of this year and next year. As we have mentioned in our press release, for the revenues, we're going to build a cluster of mobile casual business and a cluster for shooter and cluster for subculture. Although we are looking into various M&A opportunities and some of them have been into the final round of review, we haven't been able to make a final decision yet because of the valuation gap. We will continue to have discipline over the valuation to have a more effective M&A deal. As I mentioned yesterday, we have appointed Anel Siman as the leader of the mobile casual division and he's an expert in this industry.
On top of that, we're going to utilize AI technology data center that we have and for this mobile casual sector we will also pursue investment and publishing deals. On top of that, we will also pursue M&A opportunities. While we maintain the initiatives to secure core game businesses through M&A opportunities and using Anel Siman's leadership and his team, we will build know-how in the mobile casual business. We hope that this know-how has translated to other teams within our company. That's one of the pillars that I wanted to announce today. On top of that, we are also going to continue to build clusters for shooters and subculture. Secondly, I've mentioned that in the last year period we have conducted surgical operations to optimize our headcount and costs. For this year and next year, we're going to have a more targeted approach regarding these areas.
In the third quarter, I believe that already this year, in the first half of this year we have affected 100 people within the overseas branches and subsidiaries for this optimization of headcounts. Probably in the second half of this year, 200 or 300 people will be affected by our optimization plan so that we can have more efficiency in our organization. For the third quarter and fourth quarter, we would like to ask for your understanding of the possibility that our operating profit might get disrupted or affected by this optimization plan, but we think that this is a necessary process that we need to go through to build up for our future, including next year and years beyond.
The following question will be presented by Dong-Hwan Oh from Samsung Securities. Please go ahead with your question.
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Thank you for the opportunity. I believe that there have been some changes to the release timeline for your major titles including TT, so it would be much appreciated if you could give us visibility into this timeline.
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It's actually not far away from our original plan, so the Breakers title that was supposed to be released this year, it has been moved to the first quarter of next year and LLL has been moved to the third quarter next year as well as Time Takers and we have changed the timeline because we wanted to improve upon our gameplay quality and also we wanted to make sure that our publishing schedules are not in conflict so there is no delay. The delay hasn't been made because of the delay in our development of the games.
I want to emphasize that it hasn't changed greatly, but you might feel that our publishing plan has been changed quarter by quarter. I want to emphasize that this is not the matter of game development delays.
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More specifically for LLL, it will be released in the mid next year. By latest it will be the third quarter.
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Depending on the release timeline of GTA 6, there could be some changes.
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On top of that there are two more new titles that are not announced yet. Within the end of this year we're going to do the test rounds and reveal our games next year. There are also four spinoff games in our lineup and every quarter we will release our spinoff and more details will be communicated later.
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For the titles that are not revealed yet, one or two, two of them could be canceled depending on the testing results. However, I want to emphasize that we have prepared seven new titles for next year as well as four spinoffs.
The following question will be presented by Jun hyun Kim from HSBC. Please go ahead with your question.
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Thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions. First, I saw the news report mentioning that Project Tecton has been dropped and I was wondering if it was due to the publishing matters or is there any other reasons that you made the decision? Was it related to profit or other factors? Also, are you still going to release the spinoff that was supposed to be released in the fourth quarter this year? Secondly, you have transitioned towards the multi-studio system and I believe that this will lead to a faster development of new IPs and I was wondering when we would be able to see the tangible outcome impacting the development cycle getting much shorter for the new titles.
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Regarding your question about Tecton, we have made that decision because we wanted to improve the gameplay quality and our bar to evaluate the gameplay quality has been raised. We thought that maybe with the core game members, based on their know-how that was accumulated for the RTS genre, it would be more effective to create a new game instead of continuing to develop Tecton. This is also the outcome of our data-driven gameplay review approach. For the spinoff title that was previously slated for release in the fourth quarter, we also decided to move the schedule a little bit further back because we wanted to improve the quality of the gameplay. We already have made some decisions regarding the publishing side. We made that decision because we wanted to improve the game quality as well as coordinate the schedule with our publisher. That is why the release schedule has been moved to the first quarter next year.
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Regarding your question about the multi-studio system, it not only affects the external development studios, but it also affects our internal development teams. The biggest positive impact of this approach is that our team members are more committed and dedicated to each of their game titles. When we are designing our DPI, it is based on the contribution income and our members are fully aware of that. A smaller scale team will have a greater, faster increase of the contribution income. This has led to the increase of the development speed. That is why we are fully confident that we will be able to release our new titles next year.
The following question will be presented by Eric Cha from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead with your question .
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Thank you for the opportunity. I have one question. We noticed that the communication of Aion 2 has been mostly positively well received. As an analyst it is quite difficult for us to assume sales and profit if we don't have any visibility into your business model directions. I believe that for your previous games the feedback has been very positive on the gameplay side, but there has been some negative feedback over the business models. For the users who watched the live streams for Aion 2, they also expressed their concerns over the business models. I fully understand that there could be some dilemma balancing between user experience and profitability. I was wondering if you could give us more opportunities to know more details about your monetization schemes. I was wondering if for the user experience and profitability, that can go hand in hand together.
So far I believe that that wasn't the case for NCSOFT. I was wondering what's your stance and impression over this relationship.
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I believe that your question entails a lot of different aspects. Regarding Aion 2, there will be another live stream held in September and at this opportunity we are going to talk about high level information of our monetization scheme. When we are discussing more details regarding the launch timing we will be able to share more information over this aspect. I want to emphasize today that Aion 2 is more focused on PvE and dungeon content and that is different from the PvP focused Lineage-like game. We are fully aware that many users are concerned about our business model.
I want to reiterate that there will be no, and in August in our livestream in August we mentioned about the battle pass, customization, and skins and these will be our priorities. Although there could be some elements of P2W content and monetization scheme involved in Aion 2. For your second question, I think that's the most important question which was about the relationship between user experience and profitability. For this question I think I want to emphasize the profitability graph. So far we've focused on heavy business models which means that we see very high sales and user indicators at the beginning of the launch and then we couldn't make the retention rates go further in the long term perspective.
As we discussed with our development team and business team, we want to have a business model that can extend our PLC and extend our user base from a long-term perspective. All in all, when we have a lot of user base in the game, we think that even with the lighter BM the sales will increase. If we don't have enough user base, that would also disrupt our sales. We have to consider all of these factors together. At the end of the day, we want to emphasize that we will avoid the profitability graph that will show the highest retention rate and then highest indicators, and then we can't move on to the retention rates going forward. We will have the opposite approach.
The following question will be presented by Seon Park from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead with your question.
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Thank you for the opportunity. I would like to ask a question regarding the mobile casual sector. I believe that the mobile casual market has big TAM and also has a lot of subgenres and a lot of companies are involved in the market, which means that the competition is quite fierce and they are very sensitive to the mainstream trend. Although there are a lot of long-running games, there are also games that disappear soon. I was wondering, since this is the sector that you haven't explored before, what kind of subgenres are you going to pursue and could you give us more visibility into your investment plan?
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Regarding your question about the cluster of the mobile casual sector, we are not focusing on specific genres, but we want to create an ecosystem combined with our data-driven approach using our AI and data technology and ecosystem. We want to have UA marketing and big ROAs, and this will organically connect with our LiveOps service. Anel, who is our center leader, is not an expert in certain jobs, but he is an expert in creating an overall ecosystem that can make this work. As you mentioned, we noticed that there are a lot of games coming out of the mobile gaming sector. One thing that doesn't change is how we test and market our games, and that's the important part of our ecosystem. By doing so, we want to increase our UA marketing and LOAs and increase our PLC, and that will be the virtuous cycle that we want. We believe that our data and AI technologies can greatly advance this cycle.
In other words, we are not going to focus on certain genres, but we want to create an ecosystem, and we have already seen a lot of cases that were happening in other companies. When we are looking into M&A opportunities, we saw a lot of companies who have specialized in creating the ecosystem, not the specific genre.
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To add on with my comments regarding BM 's response, when you look at the career highlights of Anel Siman, you can see how our mobile gaming sector center will operate. He has previous experience in the company that developed the Talking Tom IP and also the British mobile casual team, which has the best businesses regarding IAA and IAP. I think when you look at his career highlights, you might get the sense of it. Additionally, more information will be shared with our IR team later.
Yeah, currently there are no participants with questions. Please press star, one and star, one to give your question.
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This is BM speaking. I want to emphasize that we have been able to fulfill the promises that we have made to our investors. For example, we are now turning profitable only with our legacy IPs for the Q2 financials, whether or not they are good or bad. What I want to emphasize today is that we were able to make profit only with our legacy IPs. Additionally, if we make sales through our new IPs next year, we will be able to see the great effect of the operating leverages. For this, we will continue to make initiatives and implement initiatives to optimize our cost for next year and two years from now. On top of that, for the strategies of creating a cluster of shooter games and subculture games, we will be able to release such genre titles next year.
For the mobile casual genre, we have been trying to have M&A deals starting from last year over the past one and a half years, and our know-how has been accumulated a lot, and we want to make this know-how into our revenue stream. We believe that we will be able to have a revenue stream with the mobile casual sector. If we add our M&A opportunity signed, then that would make the process much faster. We hope that you continue to have trust and interest in our strategies going forward. Thank you.