[Alpha Biz= Reporter Kim Minyoung] Korea Investment & Securities advised NCsoft on the 5th that it should maintain a conservative view, saying it does not have much visibility into its performance improvement this year. The investment opinion was 'neutral' and the target price was not suggested. The previous trading day's closing price was 193,700 won.
"Changes in user propensity are being detected in the domestic mobile game market, and in the process of responding to these changes, it has become a period of growing uncertainty about NCsoft's new games and lower profit momentum," said Korea Investment & Securities.
Korea Investment & Securities expects NCsoft's sales in the first quarter of this year to fall 16.6% year-on-year to KRW 399.5 billion and operating profit to KRW 1.8 billion, down 97.8%. This is expected to be below the operating profit consensus of 16.2 billion won.
In particular, Korea Investment & Securities is expected to see its mobile game sales slow to 255.8 billion won, down 22.7 percent from a year earlier. Analysts say Lineage 2M and Lineage W, which saw their sales increase for their fourth and second anniversary events in the fourth quarter of last year, will see their sales drop, respectively.
Korea Investment & Securities also stressed that the visibility of this year's earnings improvement is not significant.
Alphabiz Kim Minyoung (kimmy@alphabiz.co.kr)
