WEBTOON Entertainment Inc. (WBTN) September 10, 2026 Conference Transcript

Okay. I think with that and in the interest of time, we're going to start our last session of the day, Fireside Chat with Webtoon. It's great to have them back at the conference as a return participant. And, David, thanks so much for making yourself available. You and I have known each other a long time, but it's always great to get an opportunity to sit down and talk with each other.

But it's so much more fun to do it on Webtoon versus other places.

There you go. Okay. Okay. So look, I always do like to start with the opportunity of giving you the open mic of, for those who are less familiar, maybe take a little bit of an introductory answer here to sort of set the framework of the company's priorities, what you're trying to build and scale against, and just level set there. And then, as you're probably aware, I'm going to go a little bit deeper in all aspects of it.

Understood. Well, it's a pleasure to be with you as well. And for everyone listening in, Webtoon is simply put a global storytelling platform driven by technology and AI. On the one hand, we enable 27 million creators, most of whom are individual creators, most of whom are not professional creators. They have full-time jobs and they aspire one day to tell a story that maybe somebody else might like in the world. And on the other hand, we have 155 million monthly active users who spend an average of 30 to 60 minutes per day, whether they are part of our most mature market in Korea, where we have half the population on our platform, or in a nascent market like North America, where we're sub-5%. Because in between all of that, there's Webtoon, where we create an ability to give access to indie creators to tell a story that might make them a franchise star that might allow them to tell stories not just on our platform. Franchise stars can make over a million dollars a year on our platform, but also increasingly become stars off our platform in the form of a great hit movie on Amazon Prime or Tubi or Netflix or with the recent announcement we've made as a hit mobile game or AAA game. So we're a storytelling company that aspires to give access to any creator in the world to tell a story to any consumer, any reader in the world on and off our platform.

Okay, that's very well stated. So now we've got our benchmark to talk a little bit deeper about. One of the things that was interesting on the last earnings call was you introduced sort of a double-digit growth target. after a lot of back and forth in terms of some of the growth rates in the business. Talk a little bit about the confidence interval in progressing towards that target and help us better understand some of the building blocks to get to that target.

Sure. So just as a reminder to folks, as context, the thing about this business is doing approximately for an annual period $1.4 billion in U.S. GAAP revenue. 79% is in the form of paid content, our bread and butter. Paid content is not subscription. Paid content is Gen Z and the largest consumer base in the rest of the world is Gen Z and young millennials spending on average 15 to 70 cents to see the next episode of a breaking story that's created by one of these 27 million creators. I want that to sink in. Probably very different business model than a lot of the companies that many of you invest in or cover. And that's 79%. Of course, we have this emerging growth in roughly 11%, which is advertising, which should be a lot larger and it would be very creative once it is. And then we have crossover IP for the other remaining, call it eight or nine. So I just want you to understand that's the revenue of the business. And by the way, the revenue of the business has so much run to room in paid content geographically because while we started in Korea and we have 50% household penetration, in Japan we're sub-20. and the rest of the world were sub-5%. So to answer your question, what we actually did is we reaffirmed double-digit growth exiting this year, 2026.

We reaffirmed it based on confidence first in our paid content part, that 79% I mentioned.

Look at Korea. Korea is where we've been the longest. It's our most mature market. And yet Korea grew in the most recent quarter 20% on a constant currency basis. It not only grew 20% constant currency, but it grew all important metrics significantly. Paying ratio remained 15.5%. You saw an increase in top-of-funnel MAU in Korea. You saw an increase in MPU. Korea is firing on its cylinders. And even though it may be the most developed market, it's doing quite well. If you look at Rest of World, our largest addressable market opportunity, it grew over 11%. If you look at advertising, which is that a creative business model that needs to be more than, let's say, 11% or 12% of total revenue, that grew double digits as well. And it grew over 20% in the rest of the world in the most recent quarter. So why do we have confidence that we're going to exit the year? I think it's because we believe Korea will continue to perform as we've already proven it can this year. That we also believe that advertising as well as crossover IP. Crossover IP is when, almost through osmosis to date, one of our hit stories becomes a hit, not just on our platform, but on Amazon Prime or Netflix or outside our platform. We don't risk much capital to make that happen because we see a natural benefit in fandom when somebody sees on Amazon Prime or Netflix or outside our platform a major story. They want to know where it came from. But the timing of that 9% in a given quarter can fluctuate. And that's why even as I guided to 2% constant currency growth in Q3, I wanted to be clear. This is a healthy business that will go double digits exiting this year. A big part of the swing, if you know our business, is Japan. We proved in 2025 after the IPO that Japan was a rocket ship. It may be sub-20%, but we became in that period the number one consumer app, including mobile games. We knew how to do it. It's local content, a great product, and our tech services. But recently, we had to focus on making sure, I call it the launch pad, the infrastructure for Japan could support its rocket growth. And that meant until Q1 of this year, we focused on infrastructure. That's why you're seeing Japan in the recent quarter not perform the way it will. But we believe we know how to return it to growth. And that's part of our belief and our confidence that we're going to see double-digit growth ending this year as well. The last bit is all of the goodness that we announced around AI and auto-translation and short dramas, a big deal with RI games holding that allows us to get upside, the IP adaptation fund that allows us to get more upside in IP, that is all upside to the Q4 exiting call of a double-digit growth because we didn't want to include it in what we provided as confidence in the core platform and the core platform help.

Okay. Building on that answer, probably one of the most often questions we get is if you take the way you report the business geographically, how do you think about the current competitive landscape and potential scope for user growth as an algorithm in Korea, Japan, and rest of the world?

Okay. So let's take these in turn because they are quite different. In the foundation origin country of Korea, where we've been for 20 years, as I mentioned, we're 50% household penetration. We do not need to grow Korea's constant currency revenue based on top of funnel MAU growth. We happen to see three to 5% constant currency, I'm sorry, top of funnel growth in Korea. But what you saw in Korea was a strong habit formation that was already in place. where people trust and know neighbor Webtoon to provide hit stories to them and eventually turn them into, for example, hit movies on Netflix. And that was reflected in the 20% constant currency growth, the higher MPU, the higher ARPU. We worked hard to deliver that. That wasn't an accident. If you recall a year ago when we spoke, I was telling you about improvement on the career business driven by product, by better identification of what consumers want to read, this personalization engine or CRM product. We were talking about improved local content flow. And all of those things have come to pass. In fact, the leader of our Korea business, Yugi Che, was in this last spring recently promoted to be the chief product officer because we know that his proven success in Korea can translate to other platforms like Japan and to the global webtoon business. So Korea is a mature business. Consumers are already on the platform. We just need to execute as we have been to continue to see that growth. There really is not meaningful competition for the 30 to 60 minutes spent every single day from our consumers in Korea. We are dominant, and we need to continue to be dominant. Later, I'll come back to examples that leverage AI, like this interactive chat feature called by us, BY space US by us, that I think is an example of leading tech that allows us to grow in our mature market in Korea. Talk about Japan. Japan's 45% of our revenue. It's actually larger in paid content revenue today than Korea. It wasn't always the case. It was a rocket ship in 2024. Japan, we have sub-20% penetration. Japan, as you know, is three times the population of Korea. and it is a very mature creator market. People are very used to creating in the Japanese language, but they're primarily used to creating in just a few genres like manga and anime with just a few publishing houses with maybe perhaps not access to the ability to be a global hit in multiple languages. In Japan, as I mentioned, we completed our infrastructure work at the end of Q1 and we've begun to return it back to its path to growth. We also made leadership changes. We've installed a new chief business officer in partnership with our president, Yong-soo. And we've gone back to the basics of putting in place on top of the infrastructure, local content, product best practices that we know work quite well from our work in Korea, as well as partnership with strong local entities. So for example, we partnered with McDonald's on September 1st. They have a little under, I think, 10 million MAU that skews quite younger in Japan versus some of their other demographics. We think that's a strong partnership. Or the 15,000 locations, convenience store locations of Lawson's, we think that's quite strong. And as we return to our sources of local content, we believe that that market will continue to grow. By the way, ARPU in Japan is significantly higher than Korea. Something like $22, this is Marpu on a monthly basis, versus what we see for Korea, around $7.80 or $8. Because that customer base, those readers are used to buying digital entertainment. And so there, in that market, we will make it a rocket ship again, but we have to execute against what's already a habit in Japan, which is to see great stories. For the creators, the local Japanese creators have the ability to not just publish one or two genres in one language. They have the ability to be a hit globally. We enable that. We also enable them to be a hit outside of our platform, like on Fuji TV. We have many examples. We've announced a slate, by the way, of 30 animation projects, and we have a real slate over the next three years that are going to launch. I think there are nine projects we're excited to launch. So there's momentum in Japan, but we were sidetracked by a need to shore up the rocket pad, the infrastructure. we're returning that to growth. Rest of world. What's interesting about rest of world, our most nascent markets of 5% penetration, is if you look at consumers, they're young by the way, they're Gen Z and young Millennials, they act a lot like our consumers on our most mature market in Korea. It turns out Gen Z and young Millennials in the US really are looking for a story they can't find anywhere else. They want to find one from Korea or Japan or Europe or Southeast Asia. And with up to 120,000 stories arriving every day from our 27 million creators, our growth there is driven by content. One great example is we recently had this hit called Fogland by this creator called Pogo. Something like 28 million views since its global launch in September of 2025. Another example is we partnered with Duolingo again and we launched duo leveling, over 4.5 million views. So your investors may not realize that content can drive top of funnel and as well real revenue growth in a nascent market for our business. In fact, in the most recent quarter, webcomic, app, MAU, and English grew three plus, more than 3%, between three to 4%. And we also are seeing that rest of the world, constant currency revenue growth of 11%. So there, it's about pacing the pace of awareness and adoption, and it's leveraging partners like Duolingo, as well as hit content like Fogland, and as well the best practices around retention that we have learned from our markets outside of the U.S., outside of the rest of the world. So I think that unlike a lot of other companies, we have the biggest TAMs yet available. You know, a lot of folks that penetrated the U.S. and seek to penetrate markets outside the U.S. have the reverse. Here, I think we have product market fit. We just need to execute against it. And that's part of the geographic story of expansion for the company.

Okay. That was very detailed. I really appreciate that. Maybe now turning to some of the incremental growth drivers and partnerships that you've established for the business. You announced a partnership with Disney. I think we continue to get questions about what milestones and launch timeline and unit economics and all the things that can build out of that relationships that investors should expect. How do you think about the go forward with the Disney partnership from here?

I think the Disney collaboration is super exciting and still on track. Remember, it really had three different components when we announced it. The first component was to leverage great stories from their universe adapted to our platform you can now find over 20 stories from that originated from their their world as adapted titles on ours which we're excited about i think i mentioned when we last talked i was even more excited about new to the world original stories that take from a disney storyline and create something brand new that people can't get anywhere else and i think we have now a couple a few examples of that you know x-men korea is an example from the Tony Stark universe, Tony's Girl is an example. I can't go through the title of the third one because it's excessively long by definition, but you can look it up. So now we have original stories. And by the way, we did a study in something like 77% of our North America consumers, these Gen Z young millennials, they like us because they, quote, can't get stories they find on our platform anywhere else. So these originals are a core part of the adoption curve for rest of world. And then the third part is we had always said it would take us through this year that we would launch this year a brand new consumer platform, a webcomic platform in partnership with Disney that we would run. And we are on track. You will see that launch this year. So there's still a little bit of time that needs to come before investors can see that in market. But I think the Disney collaboration is on track and we're very excited about it.

Okay. Understood. You recently announced a $100 million adaptation fund in partnership with Naver. I think we've gotten a lot of questions about how to think about the strategic rationale of that, what that might mean for where the adaptation business goes medium to long term, and what signal you saw in terms of wanting to maybe take more ownership of how adaptation played out from the content that was being created on the platform.

First, I want to make sure that the audience has context on what we call our adaptation business, which, as I mentioned, is roughly 9% of our total annual revenue. We have a long history of seeing very successful rich film adaptations on Netflix, on Amazon, on Tubi, and we love that because when our creators had the hit story, Sidelined, The Quarterback and Me is a Goodwin for the U.S., that started on Wattpad, when that turns into a rich film adaptation, new fans see that and ask where did that come from they get drawn back to the platform and obviously it's great for our creators and We have largely not that to receive the benefit of the fact that we have data signal and a track record of knowing in a web comic or a web novel what will likely be a very successful film animation release maybe even a video game, because we've been quite conservative. And we have always had the positive externality of when somebody else is paying largely for their production, we still get a little bit of benefit from consumer acquisition and creator love. But what a missed opportunity for investors for us not to act in a very modest way on the fact that we do have data and signal and proven IP, but maybe very few other media entertainment companies have to have a very de-risked way to know what's going to be a hit movie well in advance. We have examples of web novels years ago that became hit web comics on our platform. Married My Husband is a great example that became Amazon Prime number one. I think of this IP Adaptation Fund, which is a $100 million USD fund of which we contribute 40% as an extremely smart de-risked way to leverage our data and market signal very selectively to receive greater upside for our investors when we know that a story is going to be a hit outside our platform. We welcome other capital. We are grateful to have Naver contribute 60%. And I think it just creates opportunity for us to play off the core strategic advantage we have to grow that 9% into something that's more accretive and larger. We are not making a headlong move against our business model. This is a product of the long history of us knowing what could be a great crossover IP hit. And I think we're being prudent, but I think it's the right time for us to stop ignoring the competitive advantage we have on knowing what's going to be a big hit outside our platform.

Okay, understood. The other thing was you recently entered in an agreement to acquire a 60% stake in a gaming company.

R.I. Games Holding.

Yeah, RA Games. Talk a little bit about the genesis of what you saw in the gaming landscape that interested you in making that type of investment, how we think about that from evolving against the broader strategy over the medium to long term.

Well, first, to call upon our history, when I was last speaking with you at a public company, it may have been when I was the CFO of Zynga. So I certainly know well personally the hit-driven problems that could come from entering the gaming world, and I've been scarred. So you would imagine that I would want to make sure that if we were to leverage our strong IP in gaming that we would de-risk as much as possible. Before we talk about the de-risk and the structure, let's talk about the context as well. Similar to what we've seen with rich film adaptations and in animation, the company has had a long history of having hit stories on our platform, Tower of God is one of them, that have turned into great games. And we have very much cheered on when that's happened without accruing any benefit to ourselves. And we probably have the same market signal and data-driven advantage that I mentioned when things become a hit as a rich film adaptation, for example. But we recognize that we are not a gaming company. We do not make the presupposition that we know how to develop games. And we don't like hit-driven businesses where we randomly see people spend against the hope that something can turn into a hit game. So rather, we would like to take our hit stories We would like to back a proven external capability in our partner, our counterparty, who has, by the way, created some of the most successful webcomic stories of all time, solo leveling, omniscient reader as two examples. And I think that proven capability in a very smart structure where we will partner with Kevin Hahn, who is the owner of the counterparty, which is the RedEye Studios head who's now part of the RI Games holding. We will partner with proven IP, not a bet on hope, with a proven game developer on a slate of games that we think can be transformative to our benefit and the benefit of our counterparty. We structure the investment, if you read the filing, quite carefully. One, there are two closes, one of which has just been complete. We will end up with a 60% ownership stake, The first 20% is complete, but we will only invest the next 40% upon the successful launch of the first game in their slate, which, by the way, already has a distribution partner that we're very excited about, and so this may happen sooner rather than later. And after we see performance of the three games that we've initially identified together, if we don't like that performance, we have a put option to reduce our stake. So this is, I think, a very carefully constructed way for the company's proven, data-driven, proven, market-tested, proven IP to turn into an off-platform set of games across all modalities, by the way, not just casual games, all forms of gaming, where we receive upside in partnership with a proven partner. It's arguably one of our first uses of our balance sheet since our IPO. So we've been very careful over the last two-plus years to carefully consider when it was the right time, and we think this is a good bet for shareholders.

Okay, understood. You introduced the concept earlier about the way in which you're using AI in the business. You're in a unique perspective or position because you have creators on one side of your marketplace that can be given more creative tools that are driven by AI, and then obviously AI can also impact discovery on the platform and the products and impact the way in which the users consume content across your properties. Talk to us a little bit about what you're building and scaling to from an AI perspective for the company.

Sure. First, to be clear, we believe in human creativity and we may be the only company that truly is aligned to our human creators, right? $2.8 billion shared in revenue with our now 27 million creators. We are aligned their success as our success, and that I don't think will ever change. Having said that, we are aggressively using AI to create success for ourselves, our investors, and our creators in the form of identifying the right content that people want to read through AI-driven personalization engines, which we've talked about on previous quarters. by giving access to our creators to new formats beyond the one that they own and pioneered as a web novel or a web comic. Increasingly being able to have... Let me explain what By Us is, which launched pretty recently back in, I think, in June of 2026. In Korea, a super fan of a character can go and have an interactive chat with that character powered by AI, can receive prompts as to what they're lost, as to what to say, what the dialogue could be, could create brand-new alternative plots, new content, and new stories. It can be not just a form of engagement with a fan and their favorite character. It can be an act of creation for a fan to become a creator, leveraging the initial fandom powered by AI to create new stories and engagement. We think opportunities like interactive chat, the ability for us to increasingly create new formats that create access for our human creators to receive revenue beyond the revenue on our webcomic platform and our webnovel platform to be very positive. And so we are very aggressively using AI. I think auto-translation is a great example, too. Being able to allow a creator to see across multiple languages their active creation in Canvas, giving readers the ability to read something in a foreign language, being able to launch in the future simultaneously in multiple languages at the same time, a hit story, I think helps the business and helps our creators. But I think it would be a failure for all of us to ignore the fact that if you can be an AI beneficiary as a public company, you owe it to your investors and your creators to give them access and to do it in the right way. And so you will hear us be increasingly more vocal about the fact that we think we can do it in an advantaged way. That's true to our business model, which will always be to promote access for our human creators.

Okay. Speaking of monetization, maybe just to close out the revenue picture, you know, over the long term, I think you've talked about having an opportunity on the advertising side of the equation. Talk a little bit about building to scale in advertising and what that could open up as another leg of revenue potential for the company long term.

You know, the heart of the company, the heart of this flywheel was to create a self-perpetuating story creation engine. And that meant that before we pursued advertising, we were going to pursue an ecosystem that serviced 27 million creators and that we had enough global signal around our 165 million monthly active users. And 80% of our businesses pay content in micropayment, not in subscription, because we have 120,000 stories arriving every day up to that amount. but you know if let's call her maddie if maddie is our typical gen z young millennial in the u.s if maddie is reading you know true beauty a romantic story about an ugly duckling protagonist and we know that she can see a beauty ad that's contextually really relevant for what she's spending 30 to 60 minutes every day reading giving her an alternative way to see the next episode. It does wonderful things for Maddie. Maddie doesn't have to pay the 15 to 70 cents, but we know Maddie, even if she doesn't, will be happily looking for the next series because she's creating habit formation and she's deepening from our cohort data the fact that she's going to access more and more series and more and more stories. That's a very high CPI, potentially direct ad sold business that is very profitable for the company that leverages the engagement, the content that already pre-exists. And we have only just started to do that.

We intended to do it faster a couple of years ago.

And I think we decided to focus on the strength and growth of the flywheel more. So I do recognize that we are in need to go and catch up. But the 11% growth in constant currency advertising revenue in the most recent quarter, 20% growth, and the rest of the world, it's a good start. We just don't want to do it to compromise the fundamental flywheel. And to do it is not rocket science. It's execution. It's a direct ad sales team in North America that understands the market. It's being on the right tech stack. But we have taken more time than we anticipated to do it the right way. That, I believe, mid to long term is still an immense upside volume to upside value-creating move for our shareholders, but we have taken more time than we anticipated to get there. Okay.

With all that we've spoken about today, there's a geographic dynamic to this business. There's a canvas and product side to this business. When you think about the mix of the business you have today and the mix of where we're going over the medium to long term, are there any messages you want to leave investors with about how gross margins or operating margins might evolve for the company?

Structurally, our gross margin, which was 26% in the posted quarter, up about a percentage Our gross profit margin grows when we grow geographically. So every piece of paid content that is consumed outside Korea has a higher margin than the original paid content in Korea. Even a great Korean language story that is consumed in English or another language has a much better variable profitability rate. So if we can grow, as I believe we should, outside of our original country, you will see accretion to the gross profit line. That's one. The second way is business model. So as I mentioned, I wish we had gone faster in advertising, but I appreciate that we're going at a pace not to jeopardize our paid content. Advertising represents a very accretive form of growth to the P&L. And given our engagement and our demographics with Gen Z and Young Millennial, I think it's a meaningfully large amount, not just on a percent gross profit margin basis, but in absolute dollars. And then let's go below gross profit. We don't need to spend, I think we spent $38.5 million in marketing this last quarter. We don't need to spend a lot on below-the-line marketing to grow. When you have Fogland hit or when someone sees sidelined on a major release or hopefully when we come to see releases with other partners like Warner Brothers or Disney, that's a really low customer acquisition cost if you can tie it back to the fandom on the platform. So I think that the question for investors on can we be more profitable at bottom line is the same question as can we grow geographically and grow our business models outside of just paid content. They're very tied. There may be what I used to call kind of productivity initiatives. We've launched an AI-driven AX initiative, but that would be upside to, I think, this fundamental structural improvement in bottom line as we grow.

Last one before I lose you. You've obviously made some decisions to invest in some outside businesses and some of the things we talked about today. Any updates to how you broadly think about allocating capital behind growth investments, outside investments, and or capital return to shareholders to update folks so they have the latest on sort of your framework or your philosophy around that?

Yeah, always, every quarter, every time we talk, the objective function is to increase shareholder value and to do it in the right long-term way for the business. But we are not ideological about the method to do so, which means that we have to look during every financial period at all the different ways to do so. What you've seen us do in this last quarter is to bet on balance sheet cash flow deployed for, I think, to be the right value-creating investments in crossover IP and extension into gaming. And I think in a de-risk way. And that clearly was our decision reflected in the last quarter. But we look at this decision anew, almost on a weekly basis. I think that the business has a lot of room to run from where we are, and use of balance sheet cash is just one lever for us to consider.

Always appreciate the opportunity to talk. Thank you, David. Please join me in thanking Webtoon for being part of the conference.