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WBTN · WEBTOON Entertainment Inc.
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All earnings calls

Earnings call · FY2026 Q1

WEBTOON Entertainment Inc. (WBTN) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Concluded May 11, 2026 Audio replay Verified speakers
May 11, 2026 41:35 31 turns
Period
FY2026 Q1
Runtime
41:35
Sources
4 artifacts

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Verified speakers 41:35 Audio
Operator

thank you for standing by my name is jericho and i will be your conference operator today at this time i would like to welcome everyone to the webtoon entertainment first quarter 2026 earnings call all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise after the speaker's remarks there will be a question and answer session if you would like to ask a question please press star one to raise your hand to withdraw your question press star one again I will now hand the conference over to sue one Kim vice president of investor relation mr. Kim please go ahead good afternoon thank you for joining us as a reminder our remarks today will include four looking

Soohwan Kim Head of Investor Relations

statements including those regarding our future plans objectives effective performance on guidance for the next quarter actual results may vary maturely from state statements information starting risks uncertainties other factors at the college these results for differs including our SEC filings, including those stated in the risk factors section of our filings with the SEC. These forelooking statements represent our outlook only as of the date of this call. We undertake no obligation to revise or update any forelooking statements. Additionally, the matters we'll discuss today will include both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of any non-GAAP financial measures, the most directly comparable GAAP measures are set forth in our earnings press release. Non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to not as a substitute for GAAP Joining me to be on the call are Jung-Ku Kim, founder and CEO, David Lee, CFO, and Jung-Soo Kim, president. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our founder and CEO, Jung-Ku Kim.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I will begin by providing a brief overview of our performance, and I encourage you to read the shareholder letter available on our Investor Relations website for a more detailed discussion on the quarter. Then David will go over the finances. I would like to begin by talking about a few areas we are investing in to support creators who are an important part of our global flywheel. Amateur creators make up a large proportion of our creators and contribute the best majority of content on our platform. We have listened carefully to our amateur creators over the last years, and we are excited to introduce major change to our Canvas platform. We are introducing a unified international platform to support global distribution across several languages, including English, Spanish, and French, which we believe will make it easier than ever for creators to share their story all over the world. We are also introducing an opt-in AI-powered translation program where creators have a choice to translate and distribute their series in other languages. As part of this update, we also expand our ad revenue share to all supported Canvas languages. Helping creators monetize their contents on our platform remains an important part of our strategy, and we have a strong track record of driving this from 2021 to 2025. The price gives $2.7 billion to our creators. Looking ahead, we want to grow that stuff. Moving on to a quick update on our Disney collaborations. Since the end of the fourth quarter, we have launched another five titles, including Star Wars, Darth Maul, Black, White, and Red, Star Wars The High Republic, Daredevil, Wings of Starlight, and Miki and Formula 1 racing the top. We look forward to introducing another original series later this year and remain well positioned to launch the new digital comic platform before the end of this year. Moving on to IT adaptations, I just want to highlight a couple of recent successes. We celebrated Valentine's Day this year with the release of two of our WAPED web novels as film adaptations. Love Me, Love Me was released on Prime Video where it reached Global No. 1 during its launch week while Kissing is the Ease part was released on Quby. We are also excited to release a webcomic adaptation of Kissing is the Easy Part on Webtoon in the next few months, moving the titles through our global ecosystem to unlock value for this fan-savory webmobile. Our Korean content continues to demonstrate its universal appeal beyond just our country of origin. In March, we co-hosted the world premiere of The Legend of Kitchen Soldier at Series Mania, Europe's biggest TV festival. The series is scheduled to premiere in Korea in May 26th, with concurrent global streaming on Disney Plus and HBO Max in select... Before I conclude, I want to share a leadership update. As we announced in March, we have elevated Yong-Soo team to present to lead our global operations. He has been a key member of our management team over the last few years with a demonstrated trend record of driving innovation through disciplined leadership, and I believe Jung-Soo will play a key role in accelerating the execution of our global business. We believe we are off to a solid start this year and look forward to driving further innovation throughout the rest of this year. With that, I will now turn the call over to David. David, please go ahead.

David Lee CFO

Thank you, J.K., and thank you, everyone, for joining us. I'll be discussing the details of first quarter 2026 results compared to the comparable quarter in the prior year, unless otherwise noted. For the first quarter, we reported revenue of $320.9 million that declined 1.5%, but grew 0.2% on a constant currency basis within our prior guidance range. This growth was driven by growth in paid content and advertising, offset by a decline in IP adaptations. We expanded gross margin by 390 basis points to 25.9% in the first quarter. We believe we can expand gross margin over time as we execute on our cross-border content distribution strategies and grow higher margin businesses such as advertising. We narrowed our net loss to $8.8 million in the quarter, compared to a loss of $22.0 million in the year prior, driven primarily by improved gross profit. We reported adjusted EBITDA of $9.5 million, well above the high end of guidance, as we exercised cost discipline, leveraging our G&A and marketing expenses to deliver adjusted EBITDA growth of 132% in the quarter. This compares to an adjusted EBITDA of $4.1 million in the same quarter of 2025. As a result, our adjusted EPS for the quarter was $0.07, compared to an adjusted EPS of $0.03 in the prior year. Turning to operational health. Global MAU declined 5.9% in the quarter. In March 2026, we saw a spike in automated web traffic in certain non-core markets. We strive to detect and minimize unauthorized access to our platform, fake user accounts, and fraudulent accounts created by bots that inflate user activity, and starting from the quarter ended March 31, 2026, we decided to exclude such users from our MAU calculation to ensure accuracy and consistency of our MAU reporting. We continue to focus on driving users to our app, as well as converting them to paying users. While AppMAU and Webcomic AppMAU declined 6.7% and 3.0% respectively year-over-year, we're pleased to have driven MPU growth of 2.2%, as our initiatives focused on recommending more relevant content to our users have been performing well. Importantly, our English platform Webcomic AppMAU increased by 3.1% year-over-year. I'd like to highlight a couple of successful new title launches in the first quarter that contributed to this growth. Ties That Bind Us, a hit Wattpad web novel, was adapted into a web comic in March 2026 and has already garnered over 5 million views. Another Strong Performer, Shifting Tales, launched in February and has consistently reigned in the top 20 amongst English platform titles. Now, I'd like to provide an update on our revenue streams at a consolidated level, starting with paid content. In the quarter, we posted 2.3% revenue growth on a constant currency basis. We are pleased to report another quarter a solid NPU growth of 2.2% in G1. We believe we can continue to drive NPU growth as we refine our AI-driven, personalized recommendation model. ARPU also increased 0.1% in the quarter on a constant currency basis. Advertising grew 0.8% in the first quarter on a constant currency basis year-over-year. In Korea, we experienced a decline in ad revenue from Naver, offset by an increase from other partners. Finally, our IP adaptations business saw revenue decline 22.2% year-over-year on a constant currency basis in Q1. As we've noted previously, revenue recognition for IP adaptations can vary quarterly, based on the achievement of certain milestones. Now I'd like to look at our results in the context of core geographies. In Korea, during the first quarter, our revenue grew 3.2% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. Driven by double-digit growth in paid content, offset by double-digit decline in IT adaptations, and single-digit decline in advertising. During the first quarter, while MAU of $23.1 million decreased 4.3%, we were pleased to see MPU of $3.7 million grow 8.5% and a paying ratio of 16.1%, increasing 189 basis points compared to the first quarter of 2025. Korea ARPU on a constant currency basis was up 5.1% compared to the first quarter of 2025. Moving to Japan. For the quarter, Japan revenue declined 3.4% on a constant currency basis. Japan saw a single-digit decline in paid content offset by a single-digit growth in advertising and triple-digit growth in IT adaptations, all on a constant currency basis. Japan's MAU of $21.1 million declined 3.6 percent. MPU of $2.1 million declined 8.3 percent. And paying ratio of 9.8 percent was down 50 basis points year over year. First quarter, Japan ARPU of $23.20 grew 3.7% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. We completed our infrastructure projects by the end of Q1, and we've redeployed resources to improve user experience on our platform. Yugi Champ, who was recently elevated to Chief Product Officer, successfully drove growth in NPU in Korea in his former role as head of free and content services, and we expect Yugi to spend a substantial amount of time focusing on our Japan business. In Rest of World, we saw revenue growth of 5.6% year-over-year on a constant currency basis in the quarter, driven by single-digit growth in paid content and advertising, offset by a single-digit decline in IT adaptations. First quarter, Rest of World MAU declined 6.7% year-over-year, while paying ratio of 1.7% increased 17 basis points compared to the first quarter of last year. We are pleased to see NPU growth of 3.3%. Rest of World ARPU of $6.80 also increased 4.4% year-over-year on a reported and constant currency basis. Turning to profitability. Gross profit for the quarter grew 16% year-over-year to $83 million. This resulted in a gross margin of 25.9%, which expanded 390 basis points compared to the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter increased 132% to $9.5 million. This resulted in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 3.0%, which expanded 170 basis points compared to the prior year. On the cost side, total G&A expenses for the quarter were $60.6 million compared to $66.7 million in the prior year quarter as we exercised cost discipline. Interest income in the first quarter was $4.4 million compared to $5.1 million in the prior year, and other loss was $2.0 million compared to other income of $2.7 million in the prior year period. We had an income tax expense of $2.7 million in the quarter compared to $2.5 million in the prior year. year. Depreciation and amortization was $8.0 million in the first quarter, compared to $8.4 million in the prior year. Net loss was $8.8 million, driven primarily by higher gross profit. This compares to a net loss of $22 million in the prior year quarter. As a result, default Q1 gap loss per share was $0.07 compared to a loss per share of $0.17 in the prior year period. Adjusted EPS was $0.07 in the quarter compared to an adjusted EPS of $0.03 in the prior year period. Our balance sheet remains strong, with a cash balance of $595 million and another $11 million of short-term deposits included in other current assets. We have a capital-efficient business model, and we believe we have the financial strength and flexibility to invest for the long term. Before I wrap up, I'd like to spend a few moments discussing our second quarter outlook. For the second quarter of 2026, we expect to deliver revenue growth in the range of 1.7% to 4.6% on a constant currency basis. This represents revenue in the range of $332 million to $342 million based on current FX rates. We anticipate second quarter adjusted EBITDA in the range of $0 to $5 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin in the range of 0.0% to 1.5%. The fundamentals of our business are strong, and we expect to see an improvement in Japan and advertising trends as we move through the course of the year. Additionally, we are continuing to make investments throughout the year in our creators, content, and users in order to drive our near- and long-term success. We continue to expect these drivers will support a return to double-digit revenue growth by the end of the year. With that, I'd like to turn it back to the operator to begin the Q&A session.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Again, we ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile Q&A roster. And also as a reminder, we'll ask everyone to stick to one question and one follow-up so we can take as many questions as possible. Our first question comes from the line of Mark Mahoney with Evercore ISI. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Mark Mahoney Analyst — Evercore ISI

Thank you. I'd like to ask two questions, please. Gross margins, you've got some nice trends working. Talk about where gross margins can go, you know, in kind of the medium term, not the next quarter, but, you know, in the next year or two. And what are the key drivers? Is it primarily this mix shift towards advertising? What else would be in there? And then secondly, could you talk a little bit about your financial philosophy is as you hopefully reaccelerate revenue growth per year guidance through by the end of the year, are there enough investment opportunities out there that you want to keep that kind of very low single-digit positive EBITDA? Is that how you're thinking about running a business, that zero to five single-digit millions in positive EBITDA generating each year, and any revenue upside, just let it flow down to investments as opposed to just dropping to the bottom line. That's sort of the philosophical question. Thank you very much.

David Lee CFO

Thanks, Mark. It's David Lee, and then others will join after I go through your two questions. They're interrelated. Let me answer the sources before we talk about, so to speak, the uses on your philosophy question. Regarding gross profit margin, as we noted in the quarter, the 390 BIP increased to 25.9%, really had two major drivers. The one that I think persists is the benefit of mixed shift as we grow more of our paid content outside of our original market of Korea, which, as we've discussed in the past, has an improved gross profit margin, along with our future growth in our advertising business. That certainly wasn't a major factor in this quarter, but it is broadly still a factor. Crossover IP, I believe, still represents the lowest form of customer acquisition investment, but it does have a lower gross profit margin, so when we see these hit crossover IPs hit a quarter or two, it will swing things. Broadly speaking, within Q1, you'll note in 2024 and in 2025, we did have some cleanup in attribution between marketing to COR, particularly in Japan and Korea. Going forward, I think we're relatively clean, and I think the mix benefit I just described is likely to persist. But within the quarter, in addition to mix, there was an isolated improvement in our Japan business's gross profit margin associated with the Japan Smartphone Act. We do not intend to drop this benefit approximately $3 million to the bottom line. We continue to want to invest it in our guidance frame for additional growth, but that That is a noteworthy improvement in the cost profile, not just for us, but many businesses in consumer tech in Japan. Let me start with the answer to your philosophy question and then turn to Yongsu or JK if they would like to comment. We're very bullish on the persistent long-term growth of this business. That's why we talk about double-digit growth by Q4. But we are intentional about investing, which you see in our Q2 guidance, behind the growth that we're excited about. Investments in Canvas that you saw as a major improvement on. Investments in our core marketing in high-growth areas. The transition you're seeing in the rest of the world. We're seeing real NPU growth, 3% growth in what we call rest of the world, and even higher if I were to break out the English-speaking portion of that. And so there are really strong reasons to invest for shareholder value. Long-term, I don't think we're limited to, as you mentioned, single-digit adjusted EBITDA dollars or margin range. I think this flywheel will continue to improve its growth prospects along with its profit margin. But I want to recognize we're still getting through our Q1 noise. We finished our infrastructure project in Japan, and we're reinvesting back into growth in Japan. And that will take a few quarters, which is why we recognize that it's the right thing to do in the short term. Long term, however, we're very bullish on both the top-line growth and the long-term potential for profit.

Speaker 9

Yeah. The management team is focused on initiatives aimed at accelerating growth, including both organic and inorganic opportunities. This includes expanding video format on the platform, strengthening digital character interaction and community features, and building mega-IT franchises that can both extend the IT business and further drive platform growth. We look forward to sharing progress update on this initiative in future course.

Speaker 7

Why don't we go to our next question?

Operator

We'll do. Our next question comes from Kunal Madhukar with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hi, thank you for taking the questions. to a side code. One is, can you give us an update on the status of the Disney digital comics platform? Then I will follow up.

David Lee CFO

Sure, and welcome to the coverage, Ghanal. I look forward to meeting you in person and talking with you in greater depth. With regard to Disney, as J.K. mentioned, we are very excited about this collaboration, and we are on track. And specifically, we reiterated targeting a 2026 launch for the new consumer app platform. but we're not sitting on our heels. Since our last Q call, this may be new news for you as you begin coverage, but having five titles launched on our platform since our last call, two Star Wars titles, Wings of Starlight, Daredevil, and actually an original around the Mickey and Formula One racing storyline, continues to exhibit the progress that we intend to continue to make. We also mentioned an additional original series coming out later this year. So I would characterize our collaboration with Disney to be on track. Very exciting, but much more to come down the road.

Speaker 7

Got it. Thanks. And then a quick follow-up on the revenue side. So you mentioned getting back to double-digit growth by 4Q26. six. Can you talk about one, what are the different elements that go into that growth acceleration? And then how much does Japan play into it? Thank you.

David Lee CFO

Yes, we're excited to drive to double-digit growth by the end of this year. Let me go through the components. As you get to know our business, paid content is our, quote, bread and butter, and our country of origin was Korea. So, noting within the quarter, A 13.9% constant currency growth in paid content in Korea reflects the fact that we're very confident in the health of our flywheel, our oldest flywheel, one that benefited from continued investment in products, AI personalization engine, a very exciting new development in character chat that was launched in June of 2024, which, by the way, is following on in Japan, shortly later, actually it launched. in Japan in February of 2026. And just to continue the thought, we're very excited about the work that we're partnering with Genies on that you'll see you can talk about with regards to having AI-powered character avatars in the US launching later this year. So continued investment in the product and the features that our readers, our consumers want, but then also continued investment in the supply chain of great stories. We talked about Canvas, our amateur platform in English, for example, having launched a new homepage, and then in just in May recently, a new app. This is showing up in things like Korea paid content, increasing 13.9%. In Japan, paid content were just completed in Q1 a pretty important infrastructure investment. This was us shoring up the infrastructure to drive growth in the latter part of this year by Q4. But we'll also note that our advertising business will lag a challenging year-ago period by Q4. We talked about one large e-commerce player hurting the growth a year ago in Korea, and how we are relatively early in the rest of the world, which we hope to begin to drive to growth by the end of this year. And then finally, there's crossover IP. More and more of these great examples of consumers discovering our stories, not just on our platform, but on the big screen and the small screens, there is an ebb and flow, and a quarter or two can make a difference. We're very excited about this slate. That's why Joong-gu mentioned and wrote in his shareholder letter about the strength of the examples. I think all three of these components are the areas we're investing in to drive to that double-digit growth number by the end of the year.

Speaker 9

Across the WebTon platform, we are continuing to see recent growth in Korea, as well as in the U.S. and the broader ROW market. Once Japan returns to growth, we believe the platform can return to a more meaningful overall growth trajectory. Key drivers behind these efforts, turning around active users and paying user growth in Japan remains our top priority. These are two growth key drivers behind these efforts. First, as David mentioned, we see significant opportunities through product innovation. At the same time, we are accelerating the development of local original contents in Japan. We plan to further strengthen our investment in local contents and creators, and more concrete plans are currently being developed.

Operator

Our next question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Eric Sheridan Analyst — Goldman Sachs

Thanks so much for taking the question. Maybe two-parter building on some of the themes we've talked about so far. In terms of changing the way in which you compensate or monetize creators on the platform, can you talk a little bit about how that might change your competitive positioning for creators across some of your key markets, not just maybe the growth markets for creators as well? That'd be number one. And then I understood on the easier comp as you get into the back part of the year with respect to advertising, but can you update us on some of the building blocks you're putting in place with respect to the advertising business that would sustain growth beyond 2026, and how should we be thinking about those investments sort of turning into yield or output?

David Lee CFO

Thanks, Eric. Good questions. Let's cover the first and then the second. With regard to our competitive position, as the dominant leader in this format, we feel we are extremely competitive with regard to the aligned revenue share model that we continue to support. I don't think you can find another platform where any creator, even an amateur creator, can sit side-by-side with the platform and see mutual benefit, and that is not going to change. We have not talked about or forecasted any need to invest more to be competitive. In fact, I think that we're increasingly providing great tools, tools like what you find in Canvas. So there is an example where we're creating value. So having a beta where an AI power translation tool can take an original English amateur story into the other seven languages, sharing our advertising revenue with amateurs is a low-cost but a very aligned way to demonstrate to even those who have not had success as a creator that if they have a hit, we will power their growth beyond. and very consistent with even what you see as a success in things like Laura Linton's on Amazon Prime or one of the many Wattpad examples. So this is a core strength of the business. We will increasingly provide more and more value to creators, and we will maintain that alignment. With no change, in my view, from a CFO standpoint in needing to increase the rev share, it's rather we're increasing the value that we give to creators in our existing model. I'll also note that this model allows for us all to benefit because as a creator exports more stories beyond their country of origination, we see more opportunity in our company's gross profit margin, as described in the previous answer to the question posed. With regard to Q4 ads, in the quarter, we talked about Korea, our most mature market for advertising, having been impacted in this quarter by a lower level of advertising from our former parent neighbor, but an increased level of support in diversifying our customers in advertising in Korea. That will continue. And we will see the benefit of that in future periods. Japan, we did not break out the growth in Japan, but we're pleased with our advertising growth in Japan. But in the rest of the world, we're much more clear-eyed. Part of the leadership change with Yong-Soo leading the business as a global president and having him ask me to lead Wattpad directly as its president is to put in place the fundamentals for the bigger game. That means that we're not driving to a short-term bump in rest of worlds or North America-based advertising. We're much more focused on the bigger prize in 2027 and beyond. And those pieces we will update you on as we can in terms of the building blocks.

Speaker 9

Creators are at the very core of Webtoon. One of our most important priorities is making Webtoon the go-to platform for more creators around the world. And the key to that is helping them share their stories and reach more users globally. The evolution of Canvas, our amateur creator platform, will further support this vision. With the launch of global chambers, creators from any region around the world will be able to upload their work and with their content, have it automatically translated through our AI-powered translation engine. In other words, Crater will be able to reach a much broader global audience, while users will gain access to wider variety of content. We believe this creates meaningful benefits for both creators and users, further strengthening the flywheel of the planet.

Operator

Our next question comes from Dave Lee with J.B. Morgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Dave Lee Analyst — J.P. Morgan

Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. The first one, when you guys talk about leadership changes that you guys have made recently, the the piece about shifting from regional structures to integrated global leadership kind of stood out. And your unification of the Canvas program also stood out as a way to bring down geographical walls. So when you guys talk about globalization of your platform, is this more of you guys doing better work in rest of the world regions? Or does that involve Korea and Japan as well and thinking about the three distinct region as a global platform overall? on, and I will follow up.

David Lee CFO

Thanks, Dave. It's a great question. Let me start by offering this point of view. Globalization is about a few things. Principally for us, it's about applying best-in-class business practices to the benefit of more than one region. It is not about just rest of the world. Let me give you an example. We're very proud of the work we've done in Korea, our original market in the last year, showing that 13.9% cost of currency growth, showing the increase in experimentation and AI personalization, you see the ARPU growth. You see the ability to own titles, not just, quote-unquote, rent and lease them. The phenomenal work in product and on business model in Korea has great relevance across the world. And as an example, we talk about a leadership change such as Yuki Che, who led that work in Korea, now leading globally as chief product officer and spending a lot of time in the investment in Japan with Yongsu's help as just one example. But Canvas is another great example where having a unified tech platform, Being able to provide seven languages, not just one, that doesn't eventually just benefit rest-of-world. That benefits the entire global platform. From a finance standpoint, it's about allocation of capital and talent to the maximum impact. And I think it's a big lever for us, not just in rest-of-world, but as a global public company across all regions.

Speaker 9

One of the biggest changes under our globally integrated organization structure is on the product side. Today, Webtoon operates different platforms across Korea, Japan, and the rest of the world markets. And we see a significant opportunity to raise the overall platform standard by more quickly and efficiently scaling successful features across the region. This includes areas such as content discovery engines, character interactive features, and video related features. By accelerating the sharing and adoption of successful product innovations across market, we believe we can improve the user experience globally and drive stronger platform growth over time. At the same time, leadership changes across both the tech side and AI organization will help accelerate AI transformation across the product and the company as a whole. We expect to move faster in integrating AI-driven innovation into both the user experience and internal operations going forward.

Dave Lee Analyst — J.P. Morgan

Got it. And as a follow-up, on the creator slide, when you guys unify Canvas, is there a reason why, I guess, like Korea and Japan might be missing there?

David Lee CFO

And then when you talk about investing $50 million in creator support, like, could you give us examples of like what kind of support I guess was lacking on your platform that necessitated this type of investment in 2026 thank you let me start with your second question first candidly I don't think we were lacking any investment in our creators it has been a 20-year passion for our founder JK and we've continuously invested in our creators in fact I think we just updated a number I want to make sure IRL correct me if it's wrong I think it's a 2.8 billion dollar creator revenue share number from 2.7 billion dollar creator investment that we've made from the periods of a five-year period of, I think, 2011 – sorry, 2021 to 2026. We'll update you if I'm off by a decimal or two. This is not going to change. And then on your first question, let's have Yongsu, our president, answer it directly.

Speaker 9

Korean and Japanese are at different stages within the WebSoon ecosystem, and each market also has somewhat different creator system and operating structures. As a result, Korea and Japan were not included in the initial rollout. However, we are actively considering a phased approach for applying this initiative to Korea-Japan over time.

Operator

Our next question comes from Matthew Cost with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Matthew Cost Analyst — Morgan Stanley

Great. Thanks for taking the question. I just want to follow up on the Canvas platform. Obviously, it's been talked a lot about a good bit on the call so far. And in the shareholder, you made a comment about increasing the number of crossovers from Canvas to originals. And I guess, is that hopefully going to be a function of just by exposing Canvas content to, you know, seven languages instead of one, that you'll have a better level of visibility into what content would succeed in the originals program. I guess help us understand what the new Canvas program will do kind of at a more granular level to help increase the conversion to the original side.

David Lee CFO

Thanks, Pat. I'll start, and then I think Youngsu will jump in. First, we have always seen great originals emerge from our amateur platform, even on the campus of yesterday. And, you know, we've given you these examples, but having folks emerge who never had a voice before, like Rachel Smythe and many, many others, even on the Wattpad side, is a core part of our business model. It is the lowest cost way for us to empower creators to write a story that we may not have suspected it would be the global hit that they eventually become. That is unchanged. Canvas is critically important for us in that way. And it is, while the purpose is unchanged, I think you'll find the specificity of the shareholder letter reflecting the fact that there's a massive upgrade in its capability. It starts with this new report, which we launched on April 21st. The whole app was refreshed on May 6th. We've highlighted these seven languages where you have AI-powered translation, but there have always been and there continue to be even more compelling tools for the amateur creator on Canvas to have a chance to graduate to being a hit maker and eventually a professional creator. I would think of this as a wholesale improvement soup to nuts rather than a bet on any small part of it. But Yolsu can jump in as well.

Speaker 9

What we expect from a globally integrated Canbus platform is the ability to attract more creators, help them reach larger audiences, and ultimately generate bigger breakout titles. Naturally, this will strengthen our Webtoon original content, PCC platforms, by creating more digital series, while also expanding the pool of content that can evolve into IP adaptation. In other words, as Canvas becomes stronger, it is the starting point for discovering new content and creators. Our overall original content development pipeline also becomes significantly stronger.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time, and this concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

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