[Edaily Reporter Lee Hye-ra] On the 9th, Kiwoom Securities downgraded its investment rating on #NAVER from “Buy” to “Outperform,” stating that the medium- to long-term sustainability of revenue from the “AI Factory” business needs to be verified. However, it raised the target price to 320,000 won to reflect the value of the related business.
Kim Jin-gu, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities, stated in a report released that day, “While we have newly reflected the business value of the AI Factory at 11.1 trillion won, it remains to be seen whether the related revenue growth will be sustained beyond the short to medium term.”
Naver officially announced its entry into the AI Factory business the previous day. An AI Factory is a large-scale infrastructure system that stably produces AI model training, inference, and services when data is inputted. It recently garnered attention when Naver Cloud formalized a partnership with NVIDIA to build a "Global AI Factory" following the visit of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to South Korea.
While acknowledging the growth potential of the related business, Analyst Kim judged that a cautious approach is needed regarding long-term revenue stability. Analyst Kim explained, “While Naver is expected to target customers focused on sovereign AI, global frontier companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic are anticipated to expand their data center investments,” but added, “It remains to be seen whether AI Factory revenue can be sustained beyond the short to medium term.”
In particular, he pointed to the burden of financing large-scale investments as a key variable. He analyzed that expanding the AI Factory business requires attracting a significant amount of external funding, and that various financing methods, such as capital increases or leases, could entail cost burdens or the potential for equity dilution.
However, the target price was raised to reflect this potential value. Analyst Kim explained, “We estimate the value of the AI Factory business at 11.1 trillion won,” adding, “We raised the target price after incorporating the intrinsic value of the AI Factory business disclosed in yesterday’s
, we raised the target price after incorporating the intrinsic value of the AI Factory business into our valuation.”