NCSoft’s market cap soars, briefly entering top 10

NCSoft continued to perform strong at the stock market, briefly entering the top 10 market capitalization list on Monday, nudging top automaker Hyundai Motor.

Hyundai Motor managed to recover its 10th place as of Tuesday, though the gap between NCSoft remained at 76.1 billion won ($63.6 million).

NCSoft is the only South Korean game company to have breached the 20-trillion-won mark in market valuation.

The game company’s market cap reached 21.8 trillion won at the closing bell on the main bourse Kospi, overtaking Hyundai’s 21.6 trillion won as of Monday. The value slightly decreased to 21.1 trillion won as of Tuesday, although the gap between it and LG Household & Health Care, which is ranked 12th, widened to 66.5 billion won as of Tuesday.

“The coronavirus outbreak has created a favorable environment for NCSoft as it brought in a new influx of gamers whose outdoor activities have been limited,” a Korea Investment & Securities official said.

NCSoft’s stock price, which stood at 541,000 won as of Jan. 2, spiked to 995,000 won on Monday, an 83.9 percent increase, catapulting its market valuation from 11.8 trillion won to 21.8 trillion won.

The company’s strong performance has been propelled by its flagship mobile games Lineage M and Lineage 2M which brought in 212 billion won and 341.1 billion won, respectively, while PC versions of the two games earned 44.8 billion won and 26.4 billion won, accounting for 85.3 percent of its record revenue of 731.1 billion won in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, NSCoft’s subsidiary Ntreev Soft aims to introduce three new releases this year -- Trickster M, Pangya M and Pro Baseball H3.

By Kim Byung-wook (kbw@heraldcorp.com)