Kakao(035720)[Edaily Reporter Park Jung-Soo ] On the 24th, KIWOOM Securities stated that it had conservatively factored in the synergistic effects resulting from the spin-off of the artificial intelligence (AI) business and the intensity of the collaboration with OpenAI. As a result, the firm maintained its “Buy” investment rating but lowered the target price by 36.4% from the previous 110,000 won to 70,000 won. The closing price on the 21st was 35,800 won.

Kim Jin-gu, an analyst at KIWOOM Securities, explained, “We identify the potential risk that Kakao’s recent strategy—centered on the ‘KanaNa’ mechanism and aimed at creating AI synergies through a spin-off—may not work in practice.”
Kakao announced a spin-off plan centered on the surviving entity, Kakao X, and the newly established Kakao AI. KIWOOM Securities projected that the future AI business will evolve into a comprehensive autonomous agent that encompasses the entire customer value based on a “frontier backbone” model, rather than being centered on segmented businesses. Accordingly, the firm judged that a strategy aiming for synergies by separating the entities may struggle to achieve higher efficiency and completeness than the current structure.
It also assessed that the collaboration model with OpenAI falls short of previous expectations. Research Analyst Kim noted, “While Kakao is emphasizing AI mechanisms centered on KanaNa this year, the partnership structure with OpenAI is focused on channeling ChatGPT within KakaoTalk rather than the strong integration we had anticipated,” adding, “The process of building an autonomous Agent AI that encompasses external third parties based on the Frontier model remains incomplete.”
Consequently, KIWOOM Securities lowered its forecasts for Kakao’s medium- to long-term Talk-based agent subscription economy and agentic advertising. For 2030, the firm revised the paid user rate (PUR) for Talk-based agents from 10.9% to 7.3% and adjusted the average monthly subscription fee from 135,000 won to 66,000 won. The forecast for average daily revenue from agent-based advertising was also lowered from 4 billion won to 2.7 billion won.
Earnings forecasts were also revised downward. This year’s revenue forecast was lowered by 8.3% from 8.9726 trillion won to 8.2314 trillion won, while operating profit was reduced by 4.5% from 1.0954 trillion won to 1.0458 trillion won.
Following the spin-off, the firm predicted that the newly established Kakao AI would have relatively high investment appeal. Kakao set the spin-off ratio for Kakao AI at 36.5% based on asset value. In contrast, KIWOOM Securities calculated Kakao AI’s weight at 56.4% based on fair value, taking into account the scalability of AI driven by advertising and e-commerce. The firm estimated the post-spin-off fair values at 13.5158 trillion won for Kakao X and 17.5018 trillion won for Kakao AI.
Analyst Kim stated, “Overall, we judge that the investment appeal of the newly established entity will be significantly higher following the spin-off,” adding, “There may be room for further adjustments centered on the core AI value, depending on future changes in the strength of Frontier partnerships.”