Krafton joined the 3 trillion won club after posting its highest-ever revenue, supported by record growth in the intellectual property of PUBG: Battlegrounds and the market settling of new titles.

In an earnings conference call on Sunday, Krafton detailed a mid- to long-term strategy combining artificial intelligence with its core game capabilities and declared it would leap forward as a global pioneer.

Krafton posted consolidated revenue of 3.33 trillion won last year and operating profit of 1.05 trillion won. Revenue rose 22.8% from a year earlier to a record high, but operating profit fell 10.8% after reflecting an expansion of development staff and one-off costs. Fourth-quarter revenue was 919.7 billion won and operating profit was 2.4 billion won.

On the sharp drop in fourth-quarter operating profit, Chief Financial Officer Dong-geun Bae (배동근) said it reflected one-off costs including an 81.6 billion won contribution to a joint employee welfare fund to be used over the next four years ahead of a move to a new headquarters in Seongsu-dong. He said the items would not be repeated and the company would balance investment and returns based on stable cash generation.

■ PUBG IP enters era of 1 trillion won in annual revenue as PUBG 2.0 evolution accelerates

The PUBG IP franchise grew 13% year on year last year. The Battlegrounds IP grew 16% year on year on the PC platform, surpassing 1 trillion won in annual revenue for the first time. Average monthly users rose 11% from a year earlier, showing steady traffic. A Porsche collaboration held in November posted the best performance among supercar tie-ups and helped drive fourth-quarter PC revenue.

Results for January were also positive. Bae said a New Year rerun event in January delivered the highest revenue among the same event to date. He said partner companies' technical service fees also showed solid growth in January through multiple revenue content updates.

The mobile segment also extended its growth. Paying users of Battlegrounds Mobile and Battlegrounds Mobile India, or BGMI, rose 5% and 27% year on year, respectively. Fourth-quarter mobile platform revenue fell 19% from a year earlier due to seasonal off-peak factors, but Chief Executive Chang-han Kim (김창한) said the company focused on operations aimed at expanding volume rather than revenue. He said this was not a crack in fundamentals and would be confirmed by first-quarter figures.

On China's Peacekeeper Elite, it said competing shooting games are limited to China and have different genre characteristics. It stressed that the user base is expanding, with the title's average daily active users growing by more than double digits year on year.

Based on this growth, Krafton is speeding up a platform transition to PUBG 2.0, centered on an Unreal Engine 5 upgrade and an advanced user-generated content ecosystem. It is also strengthening franchise competitiveness through an IP-based lineup of new titles including Black Budget, PUBG: Blindspot and Valor.

■ Raise in-house production efficiency by 40% and secure 'big IP' through three-stage M&A

Early results from new titles have also been encouraging. inZOI and MIMESIS, released last year, each sold more than 1 million copies in their early period, showing IP power. Krafton currently operates 26 production pipelines and plans to roll out Subnautica 2, Palworld Mobile, NO LAW and Dinkum Together in sequence.

The company is also accelerating production efficiency. It plans to use AI technology in production processes to improve new-title development costs by about 40%. Bae said simple art asset outsourcing that previously required spending could be replaced by AI, reducing outsourcing service costs over the long term versus the past.

In M&A and investment, it will pursue a three-stage strategy: large-scale M&A to secure mega IP, mid- to small-sized M&A to enhance the value of fandom-based IP, and strategic equity investments and 2PP, or second-party publishing. Kim said big IP M&A is a very high strategic priority and the company is continuously reviewing opportunities to scale up under an appropriate premium.

On Japan's ADK, in which it invested 710 billion won last year, it said it is identifying synergies such as turning animation IP into games or games into animation. It said it will first find IP suitable for game development and use Krafton's capabilities to make global games.

On the 2026 cost structure, Bae said about 40 billion won in costs related to a voluntary resignation program would be reflected in the first quarter. He said marketing expenses would rise somewhat due to releases including Subnautica 2 and new PUBG IP titles, and commissions paid would also increase as new-title development and franchise strengthening continue.

■ 'Game for AI' new business blueprint and 1 trillion won-scale shareholder returns over three years

Its AI strategy is expanding beyond AI for Game, which supports production efficiency, to Game for AI, which moves game capabilities into the real world. It will build models that recognize the real world based on in-game data and, in the mid to long term, seek new business opportunities in physical AI fields such as humanoid robotics. Kim stressed that it would maximize synergy through partnerships with global leading hardware companies.

Krafton will also implement a new shareholder return policy totaling at least 1 trillion won over three years from 2026 to 2028 to enhance shareholder value. For the first time since listing, it will introduce annual cash dividends of 100 billion won and plans to use more than 700 billion won to buy back shares and cancel all of them. Krafton will begin a first share buyback worth about 200 billion won from Monday.