WEBTOON Entertainment Inc. Common Stock Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026

It's so much more fun to do it on WEBTOON versus other places.

Understood. Well, it's a pleasure to be with you as well, and for everyone listening in, WEBTOON is, simply put, a global storytelling platform driven by technology and AI. On the one hand, we enable 27 million creators, most of whom are individual creators, most of whom are not professional creators. They have full-time jobs, and they aspire one day to tell a story that maybe somebody else might like in the world. On the other hand, we have 155 million monthly active users who spend an average of 30-60 minutes per day, whether they are part of our most mature market in Korea, where we have half the population on our platform, or in a nascent market like North America, where we're sub 5%.

Because in between all of that, there's WEBTOON, where we create an ability to give access to indie creators to tell a story that might make them a franchise star, that might allow them to tell stories not just on our platform. Franchise stars can make over $1 million a year on our platform, but also increasingly become stars off our platform in the form of a great hit movie on Amazon Prime or Tubi or Netflix, or with the recent announcement we've made, as a hit mobile game or AAA game. We're a storytelling company that aspires to give access to any creator in the world to tell a story to any consumer, any reader in the world, on and off our platform.

Sure. Just as a reminder to folks, as context, the thing about this business is doing approximately, for an annual period, $1.4 billion in U.S. GAAP revenue. 79% is in the form of paid content, our bread and butter. Paid content is not subscription. Paid content is Gen Z and the largest consumer base in rest of world is Gen Z and young millennials spending on average $0.15 to $0.70 to see the next episode of a breaking story that's created by one of these 27 million creators. I want that to sink in. Probably very different business model than a lot of the companies that many of you invest in or cover. That 79%, of course, we have this emerging growth in roughly 11%, which is advertising, which should be a lot larger, and it would be very creative once it is.

Then we have crossover IP for the other remaining, call it 8% or 9%. I just want you to understand that's the revenue of the business. By the way, the revenue of the business has so much room to room in paid content geographically, because while we started in Korea and we have 50% household penetration, in Japan, we're sub 20%. In rest of world, we're sub 5%. To answer your question, what we actually did is we reaffirmed double-digit growth exiting this year, 2026. We reaffirmed it based on confidence first in our paid content part, that 79% I mentioned. Look at Korea. Korea is where we've been the longest. It's our most mature market. Yet Korea grew in the most recent quarter 20% on a constant currency basis. It not only grew 20% constant currency, but it grew all important metrics significantly.

Paying ratio remained 15.5%. You saw an increase in top of funnel MAU in Korea. You saw an increase in MPU. Korea's firing on its cylinders, and even though it may be the most developed market, it's doing quite well. If you look at rest of world, our largest addressable market opportunity, it grew a little over 11%. If you look at advertising, which is that accretive business model that needs to be more than the, say, 11% or 12% of total revenue, that grew double digits as well, and it grew over 20% in rest of world in the most recent quarter. Why do we have confidence that we're going to exit the year? I think it's because we believe Korea will continue to perform as we've already proven it can this year, that we also believe that advertising as well as crossover IP.

Crossover IP is when, almost through osmosis to date, one of our hit stories becomes a hit not just on our platform, but on Amazon Prime or Netflix or outside our platform. We don't risk much capital to make that happen because we see a natural benefit in fandom when somebody sees on Amazon Prime or Netflix or outside our platform a major story. They want to know where it came from. But the timing of that 9% in a given quarter can fluctuate. That's why even as I guided to 2% constant currency growth in Q3, I wanted to be clear. This is a healthy business that will go double digits exiting this year. A big part of the swing, if you know our business, is Japan. We proved in 2025 after the IPO that Japan was a rocket ship.

It may be sub 20%, but we became, in that period, the number one consumer app, including mobile games. We knew how to do it. It's local content, a great product, and our tech services. But recently, we had to focus on making sure, I call it the launchpad, the infrastructure for Japan could support its rocket growth, and that meant until Q1 of this year, we focused on infrastructure. That's why you're seeing Japan in the recent quarter not perform the way it will. But we believe we know how to return it to growth, and that's part of our belief and our confidence that we're going to see double-digit growth ending this year as well. The last bit is all of the goodness that we announced around AI and auto translation and short dramas, a big deal with RI Games Holdings that allows us to get upside.

The IP adaptation fund that allows us to get more upside in IP. That is all upside to the Q4 exiting call of a double-digit growth, because we didn't want to include it in what we provided as confidence in the core platform and the core platform health.

Okay, let's take these in turn, because they are quite different. In the foundation origin country of Korea, where we've been for 20 years, as I mentioned, we're 50% household penetration. We do not need to grow Korea's constant currency revenue based on top-of-funnel MAU growth. We happen to see 3%-5% constant currency, I'm sorry, top-of-funnel growth in Korea. But what you saw in Korea was a strong habit formation that was already in place, where people trust and know Naver WEBTOON to provide hit stories to them and eventually turn them into, for example, hit movies on Netflix. That was reflected in the 20% constant currency growth, the higher MPU, the higher ARPU. We worked hard to deliver that. That wasn't an accident. If you recall a year ago when we spoke, I was telling you about improvement on the Korea business driven by product, by better identification of what consumers want to read, this personalization engine or CRM product.