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Kim Jung-ju is the founder of South Korean online-gaming giant Nexon.
NXC, Korea
Kim Jung-ju’s net worth dropped $2.2 billion on Thursday after his gaming giant Nexon disappointed investors with a downbeat earnings outlook.
Nexon’s shares suffered their biggest daily decrease since May 2020, when they plunged 14.4% on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The drop erased 17% of Kim’s net worth, bringing his wealth down to $10.9 billion on the Real-Time Billionaire List. The 53-year-old founder still retains the No. 3 ranking among Korea’s richest people.
Nexon announced its first-quarter earnings results a day earlier that showed the online-gaming behemoth had benefited from worldwide coronavirus lockdowns and social distancing rules. Its revenue grew 7% year-over-year to ¥88.3 million ($8 million) in the first three month of 2021. The company also recorded a better-than-expected operating profit of ¥43.4 million in the first quarter, up 4% from the same period last year.
Yet, Nexon warned that it expects short-term declines in player engagement as the world slowly recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic. The company said its revenue may decrease as much as 3% year-over-year in the first six month of 2021. It’s also bracing for a slide in operating profit of up to 19% year-on-year in the same period.
Nexon’s $100 million investment in bitcoin also suffered a loss on Thursday. The cryptocurrency tumbled more than 10% in Asian trading following Elon Musk’s tweet that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin for car purchases due to the environmental cost of mining and trading the digital currency. Nexon’s purchase of bitcoin accounts for less than 2% of the company’s cash hoard as of December 2020.