Kakao said on Thursday that its second-quarter operating profit rose 36 percent from a year earlier to 277.0 billion won under Korean International Financial Reporting Standards (K-IFRS) on a consolidated basis.

Second-quarter revenue rose 9 percent to 2.10 trillion won, and the operating margin was 13 percent. Operating costs rose 6 percent to 1.82 trillion won.

Kakao said second-quarter revenue and operating profit were prepared on a continuing operations basis after Kakao Games, which was excluded from consolidation, was classified as discontinued operations. It said the comparable results for the second quarter of last year were based on standards that did not classify Kakao Games and others as discontinued operations.

By business area, platform revenue rose 17 percent to 1.23 trillion won from a year earlier. Of that, Talk Biz revenue rose 12 percent to 643.2 billion won. Talk Biz advertising and subscription revenue rose 14 percent to 399.9 billion won, while Talk Biz commerce revenue increased 10 percent to 243.2 billion won. Talk Biz commerce gross transaction value was put at 2.7 trillion won.

Other platform revenue, including mobility and pay, rose 22 percent to 587.0 billion won from a year earlier.

Content revenue for the second quarter rose 1 percent to 868.2 billion won from a year earlier. Music revenue rose 8 percent to 558.4 billion won, media revenue increased 5 percent to 99.1 billion won, and story revenue was tallied at 210.7 billion won.

Kakao plans to roll out sequentially an agentic artificial intelligence (AI) experience in KakaoTalk that performs ordering, reservations and payments. It plans to work with partners in commerce, reservations, travel and payments, and expand the ecosystem using its open platform, PlayMCP.

Chief Executive Shina Chung (정신아) said, "Competitiveness in the agentic AI era does not stop at simply building a strong model, but lies in understanding users' context and intent and linking that to real actions." She said, "Based on KakaoTalk as a daily user touchpoint and the technology and service ecosystem we have accumulated, we will bring forward an era in which the entire nation naturally uses its own AI agent."