Nexon revenues up £60m

Nexon has reported a significant rise in profits for its first quarter of 2013, as its acquisition of mobile developer Gloops proved highly rewarding in Japan.

The online games company hit 9.9 billion yen (£63m) in revenue, a year-on-year rise of rise of 222.4 per cent.

The company’s profits in Japan were just as striking, leaping up 448.4 per cent to reach 1.9 billion yen (£12.2m).

Nexon’s huge turnaround in performance is largely thanks to its $470 million acquisition of Gloops, the Japanese mobile developer behind Japan Pro Baseball Card Battle and Three Kingdoms Guild Battle in October 2012.

Nexon has developed and published its own titles in its home nation of South Korea, such as MapleStory and Shattered Galaxy, and also owns number of subsidiaries overseas.

In its home country, the ongoing strong performance of Sudden Attack and Dungeon & Fighter drove revenue up 27 per cent to 30.7 billion yen (£19.8m), with profits up 8.7 per cent to yen 18 billion (£11.5m).

However, its strong performance in the Far East was in contrast to that of the Western. In North America arm manage a 9.5 per cent increase in revenue to reach 1.5 billion yen (£9.6m), but made a bigger loss than the prior year quarter (145 million yen to 182 million yen).