[Click e-Stock] "NC Expands Beyond Gaming into AI... Target Price Raised"

IBK Investment & Securities Sets NC Target Price at 390,000 Won

On June 2, IBK Investment & Securities positively evaluated NC's entry into the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, raising its target price from 280,000 won to 390,000 won while maintaining its 'Buy' investment rating.

Previously, in February of last year, NCSoft established an independent subsidiary called "NC AI" by physically splitting off its specialized AI organization to strengthen its expertise in the AI business. NC AI operates "VARCO," a next-generation multimodal AI platform that integrates support for game graphics, digital human creation, high-resolution sound generation, real-time multilingual translation, and digital fashion design.

Beyond the gaming sector, the company is also pursuing businesses targeting the demand for generative AI transformation (AX) in public and enterprise sectors such as manufacturing, finance, and defense. Recently, NC AI unveiled "Baequi," an industrially specialized foundation model with 100 billion parameters. Seunghoon Lee, a researcher at IBK Investment & Securities, assessed, "By applying technology that dramatically reduces memory usage during computation by up to 83%, NC AI is solidifying its position as a platform for enterprise-customized sovereign AI supply."

In its core business, the company is also strengthening its presence in the gaming industry by delivering an earnings surprise (results exceeding market expectations). On a consolidated basis for the first quarter, NC posted sales of 557.4 billion won and operating profit of 113.3 billion won. These results reflect the performance of the newly launched "Lineage Classic" and the commercial success of "Aion 2."

The positive impact of consolidating the results of strategically acquired mobile casual game companies was also reflected. Operating expenses increased by 25.1% year-on-year; regarding this, researcher Lee explained, "This was due to the early recognition of company-wide incentives following the success of 'Lineage Classic' as well as employee stock compensation aimed at retaining core talent."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.