A Down Quarter But An Up Year For NEXON, Despite The First Descendant Coming In Below Expectations

I feel like every NEXON financial report I ever read says it was "record-breaking." This time around, though, the company isn't referring to its Q4 results. Those were actually down a bit. Revenue for Q4 came in at ¥79.7 billion (~$55 million USD), down 6$%, but the entire 2024 results came in 5% up year-over-year with income following suit.

Dungeon&Fighter as a franchise went bonkers pulling in 53% growth on the back of the mobile version's release in China, and Mabinogi (surprisingly) continues to see steady slow growth.

On the other side of things, though, FC and MapleStory saw declines with the latter continuing to see dives in the Korean version's numbers. The global version has grown and now makes up about 35% of the franchise's total revenue.

Another deep hit comes from The First Descendant. The looter-shooter, despite adding more bikinis and hot tubs today, saw revenue for Q4 come in below expectations. While NEXON attributes this mostly to "a decline in traffic due to a lack of fresh content," I don't know if the new content helps much here. Sure, updates will likely bring players back, but will they stay long given some of the grinds in the game that made them leave in the first place? This will be one to watch as the game has been hemorrhaging players since launch.

If you're a player of The Finals, that finished right in line with expectations, so you should be a little safer there.

With cash on hand, NEXON is moving forward with purchasing back some of their stock. The company plans to buy back about $35 million in shares between now and June, with another $35 million being purchased within one year.