NHN posted record quarterly sales and operating profit in the third quarter, helped by growth in key businesses including games, payments and cloud.

NHN said on Monday it posted third-quarter consolidated sales of 758.3 billion won and operating profit of 58.8 billion won. Sales rose 21.2% from a year earlier and operating profit jumped 112.6%.

Sales in the games segment came to 131.0 billion won, up 10.7% from a year earlier but down 6.2% from the previous quarter.

Web board game sales rose 16.2% from a year earlier, leading growth. Higher average revenue per user due to changes in the regulatory environment, the Chuseok holiday effect and the offline tournament Hangame Poker Tour (HPT) were reflected. Hangame Mobile Poker recorded its highest-ever monthly sales for two straight months in September and October.

Sales in the payments segment came to 397.6 billion won, up 21.5% from a year earlier and 0.9% from the previous quarter.

NHN KCP’s third-quarter total transaction value was 17.3 trillion won, up 30.5% from a year earlier. Transaction value from overseas merchants rose 75.4%, and its share of the total increased to 25.3%.

Sales in the technology segment came to 171.7 billion won, up 53.6% from a year earlier and 7.5% from the previous quarter. NHN Cloud’s third-quarter sales rose 75.5% from a year earlier on growth in its artificial intelligence graphics processing unit business.

The Seoul Yangpyeong region, which is being operated under a government GPU build project, has completed sales of external GPU volume for the next five years. It added B300 GPUs to the Gwangju National AI Data Center in August, and revenue from Krafton’s GPU cluster project began to be reflected from the third quarter.

NHN Techorus, a Japan-based technology unit, also lifted sales 20.8% from a year earlier on growth in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) resale business.

Sales in the other segment came to 78.5 billion won, down 12.4% from a year earlier and 10.8% from the previous quarter.

NHN plans to focus its games business on domestic web board games and the operation of mobile games in Japan, while restructuring some low-profit businesses. It is aiming to launch Puchi Poyong in Fantasy World, unveiled at the Tokyo Game Show in September, in the first half of 2027.

In its payments business, it is pushing to build payment infrastructure based on stablecoins and AI agents. NHN KCP joined Google’s agent payment protocol AP2 and also joined the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) under the Linux Foundation.

NHN Cloud aims to operate AI data centers of about 100 MW in scale, including existing facilities, by the end of 2027.

It plans to lease 20 MW at the Pohang AI Data Center, scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of next year, and build its own 10 MW infrastructure in the Gwangju Research and Development Special Zone. It also plans to lease the 26 MW Jangseong Pine AI Data Center being built in Jangseong County in the Jeonnam-Gwangju Integrated Special City.

It plans to add more than 1,700 B300 GPUs at metropolitan area data centers including Seoul Gasan and Incheon Gajwa and start services sequentially from January next year.

NHN Chief Executive Woojin Jeong (정우진) said, "Across our core businesses, we continued balanced growth and a profit-making trend, achieving the biggest quarterly results ever again in the third quarter." He said, "We will strengthen competitiveness in future growth engines such as stablecoins, AI agent payments and GPU services."