NCSOFT Q3 net profit up 83 pct on stellar sales of 'Lineage' franchise

NCSOFT Corp., a major South Korean online and mobile game developer, said Friday its third-quarter net income soared more than 80 percent from a year earlier, led by strong sales from the latest entry of its popular "Lineage" franchise.

It logged a net profit of 182.1 billion won ($132.2 million) on a consolidated basis in the three months ending in September, compared with 99.5 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.

For the quarter, NCSOFT posted an operating profit of 144.4 billion won, up 50 percent from an operating income of 96.3 billion won a year ago. Sales rose 21 percent on-year to 604.2 billion won over the cited period.

The earnings sharply beat market expectations. The average estimate of net profit by analysts stood at 95.8 billion won, according to a survey by Yonhap Infomax, the financial data firm of Yonhap News Agency.

The company attributed strong sales to the popularity of "Lineage W," the latest in its long-running popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game franchise, which was released in November last year.

Sales of "Lineage W" reached 197.1 billion won for the July-September period, accounting for 45.1 percent of combined sales from all the company's mobile game products.

Other previous series, "Lineage 2M" and "Lineage M," also generated sales of 146.5 billion won and 85.6 billion won, respectively.

Quarterly revenues of PC Games amounted to 97.1 billion won, down 4.4 percent from a year ago.

By country, sales from South Korea reached 375.4 billion won, accounting for 62.1 percent of the company's overall sales, followed by Asia with 140.8 billion won, and North America and Europe combined with 44.8 billion won.

NCSOFT said it is planning to release its new PC and console-based title "Throne and Liberty" in the first half of next year and developing other genre games, ranging from puzzle to action and role-playing games.