NAVER's stock price rose over 10% in the early hours on 18th, setting a new high for the year. This is attributed to the appointment of a former NAVER executive as the first chief of artificial intelligence (AI) at the presidential office, along with the forecast from securities firms that strong performance is expected this year.
As of 10:29 a.m. on the 18th, NAVER is trading at 239,000 won, up 32,500 won (15.74%) from the previous trading day in the securities market. It traded at 239,500 won in the early hours, setting a new high for the year.
Earlier, President Lee Jae-myung appointed Ha Jung-woo, head of the NAVER Cloud AI Innovation Center, as the first chief of 'AI Future Planning' on the 15th. The AI chief is a newly established position under the Lee administration, which is said to oversee the investment roadmap for realizing President Lee's campaign promise of '100 trillion won in AI investment.'
DAOL Investment & Securities projected that NAVER will record a sales revenue of 11.8526 trillion won and an operating profit of 2.2231 trillion won this year. These figures represent increases of 10.4% and 11.8% compared to the same period last year.
Kim Hye-young, a researcher at DAOL Investment & Securities, stated, 'The home feed effect of NAVER continues to contribute to advertising revenue, and the company is strengthening its search services applying AI,' and raised the target price from the previous 240,000 won to 280,000 won.