Krafton, Inc., developer of the Battle Royale game PUBG: Battlegrounds with headquarters in South Korea, has announced its preliminary results for the first quarter of 2022 today.
Krafton recorded a quarterly turnover of $ 405.7 million in accordance with the Group’s financial statements according to the Korean International Financial Reporting Standard (K-IFRS). The quarterly turnover from Krafton thus reached a record high and increased by 17.8 % compared to the previous quarter and 13.5 % above the result of the previous year’s quartal. Here are further details about the results of the Q1 2022.
Summary of the results for Q1 2022
- Sales: $ 405.7 million (+17.8 % QOQ and +13.5 % YOY)
- Operating profit: $ 241.9 million (+628 % QOQ and +37 % YOY)
- Net profit: $ 190.2 million
The increase in the operating result compared to the previous quarter and the previous year is due to lower operating costs (e.g. marketing costs) and the loss of the unique costs for the stock allowance in 2021.
Factors that contributed to the quarterly growth
In the first quarter of 2022, the pubg -ip recorded balanced growth on all platforms. Since a large number of old users returned to the game after the changeover of PUBG: Battlegrounds to Free-to-Play (F2P) in January 2022, the average monthly active users (MAU) tripled almost compared to Q4 2021. Users rose by more than twice and thus contributed significantly to the increased quarterly sales. As a result, PUBG’s PC turnover reached $ 82.3 million Battlegrounds, an increase of 61 % compared to the previous year. PUBG’s console sales: Battlegrounds rose by 124 % in the quarterly comparison and 274 % in the year.
PUBG: Mobile recorded sales of $ 307.1 million in the first quarter of 2022, which corresponds to an increase of 30 % in the previous quarter and 5 % in the previous year. These growths were powered by a number of in-game IP cooperation and robust live service systems.
The international markets (outside of South Korea) contributed 95 % to the turnover of Krafton in Q1 2022. The company has contributed to the development of the local game industry in India by strategically investing in the country’s IT and media ecosystem. Accordingly, battlegrounds Mobile India had an upward trend for market share and sales.
New games and expanded business focus in 2022
Krafton will publish new titles such as “Project M” and “the Callisto Protocol” this year. Unknown Worlds, the makers of the Subnautica series, which Krafton 2021 took over, develop a new game with the code name “Project M“, which is planned for Early Access this year. “Project M” is a unique round-based strategy game that plays in a sci-fi world. The Callisto Protocol, a survival horror game developed by the striking distance studios, is also to be launched in 2022. In addition, internal project incubation teams on Deep Learning developed games based and carried out public tests on Steam.
The company continues to work on strengthening the web 3.0 business and the establishment of a joint venture with Naver Z. A team of members who are committed to NFT research and have experience in game research and development, has a sandbox- Processing tool is developed that can be used for the development of games and the implementation of the meta verse. The team plans to carry out an alphate test in the first quarter of 2023. As such, Krafton plans far -reaching efforts to set up the Create to Earn (C2E) ecosystem.
breakdown of the performance in the 1st quarter of 2022 compared to previous period
| result
(Q1 2022)
| result
(Q1 2021)
| Variance
(Yoy %)
| result
(Q4 2021)
| Variance
(Qoq %)
– —
Income | 5.230 | 4.610 | 13.5 % | 4.440 | 17.8 %
Operative profit | 3,119 | 2.272 | 37.3 % | 430 | 625.5 %
Pure profit | 2.452 | 1.940 | 26 % | 62 | 3.830 %
_ ▲ Table: Kraftons (provisional) result for the 1st quarter 22 on a consolidated basis (unit: KrW100M) _
The latest information about Krafton can be found at www.krafton.com.