By Joyce Lee
SEOUL (Reuters) - Naver Corp (KS:035420), South Korea's top internet portal operator, reported an annual 88 percent rise in operating profit for July-September, mostly in line with expectations as Japan-based chat app subsidiary Line Corp continued to fuel growth.
Line reported net sales of 208.5 billion won ($198.0 million), up 57.1 percent from a year earlier, buoyed by brisk sales of games and "stickers," or special emoticons.
For July-September, Naver reported an operating profit of 189 billion won, compared with a mean estimate of 201 billion won, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Naver said in a statement that overseas sales, including that of Line, bolstered revenue growth with some 33 percent of third-quarter sales coming from abroad.
Naver took some investors by surprise late September when it announced that Line will not complete an initial public offering this year. The messaging app operator is considering whether to list in Japan, the United States or in both countries via a dual listing.
A senior Naver executive told Reuters that the firm decided to hold off on a Line IPO on the belief that the Japanese company can command better valuation by further building its revenue and profit.
Earlier this month, Line said its messaging app bearing the same name currently has 560 million users globally. The service's monthly active users - considered to be a more important metric by analysts - was 170 million, however, falling short of expectations.
(Additional repoting by Kahyun Yang; Writing by Se Young Lee; Editing by Michael Perry, Miral Fahmy and Anand Basu)