Naver said on Thursday that, on a consolidated basis, second-quarter revenue rose 16.2 percent from a year earlier to 3.39 trillion won, while operating profit fell 0.2 percent to 520.3 billion won.

The drop in operating profit reflected expanded investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. By business segment, second-quarter revenue was 1.9 trillion won for Naver Platform, 470.7 billion won for Financial Platform and 1.02 trillion won for Global Challenge.

Naver Platform revenue rose 12.3 percent from a year earlier and 3.4 percent from the previous quarter. Advertising revenue grew 7.5 percent from a year earlier as AI targeting was applied. The 'AI Briefing Ads', officially launched in July, posted a click conversion rate of more than 30 percent compared with existing search ads. Service revenue rose 31.3 percent from a year earlier, based on strengthening Naver Plus Store, membership and N Delivery.

Financial Platform revenue increased 16 percent from a year earlier and 2.4 percent from the previous quarter. Second-quarter Npay payment volume rose 21.0 percent from a year earlier to 25.2 trillion won, driven by expansion of Smart Store and the external ecosystem. Naver made a full-scale entry into the AI platform business for merchants by expanding its offline integrated terminal, 'Npay Connect', and plans to integrate online and offline data to enhance competitiveness across the Naver ecosystem and create new monetisation opportunities.

Revenue in the Global Challenge area rose 24.4 percent from a year earlier and 7.9 percent from the previous quarter, led by the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) segment including Wallapop, Poshmark and Soda. C2C segment revenue grew 74.9 percent from a year earlier and 13.3 percent from the previous quarter. Content revenue rose 0.5 percent from a year earlier, while enterprise revenue increased 21.3 percent on expanded business-to-business (B2B) transactions related to AI and digital twins.

Revenue related to the 'AI Factory' business Naver is pursuing with Nvidia is expected to start from the first half of next year.

Naver CEO Soo-yeon Choi (최수연) said, "By recently forming a strategic partnership with Nvidia and moving ahead with the AI Factory business, we built a foundation to quickly expand the business while minimising the initial capital burden." She added, "Through global large customers, Nvidia's ecosystem and our customer base, we will proactively secure customers for initial operating capacity and create new growth engines in the global AI computing market."