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SEOUL, Aug. 11 (Yonhap) -- NHN Corp., one of South Korea's leading information technology and online gaming companies, on Tuesday said its second-quarter net profit more than doubled from a year earlier, boosted by its core businesses.

The company's net profit for the April-June period was 29.1 billion won (US$20.5 million), up 158.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the company's regulatory filing.

Operating income for the three-month period was 57.9 billion won, up 164.1 percent from a year ago. Sales also rose 25.3 percent to 757.9 billion won, the filing said.

The two figures were the highest for any quarter, the company said.

NHN's flagship payment business saw sales rise 27.3 percent on-year to 394 billion won.

Its technology units, which include artificial intelligence (AI) cloud services, rose 52.9 percent on-year during the cited period to 159.8 billion won.

Revenue from its game unit advanced 21.5 percent on-year to 139.6 billion won, while those from its other businesses, including travel, fell 8.8 percent from a year earlier.

The company said it plans to accelerate the growth momentum across its core businesses in the second half and lay the ground work for a solid revenue-generating foundation.

To that end, the company plans to focus its efforts in developing new games, especially for the Japanese market, while advancing its payment models for stablecoins, which NHN said would serve as a new growth engine.

The IT firm also plans to aggressively expand its AI infrastructure business, mainly targeting the overseas market, starting with securing data centers in Japan, a company executive said.

fairydust@yna.co.kr

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