{"id":135807,"date":"2026-08-28T20:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T20:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/135807\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T20:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T20:15:11","slug":"naver-shares-slide-back-toward-200000-won-support-as-investors-who-bought-at-peak-cry-foul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/135807\/","title":{"rendered":"Naver shares slide back toward 200,000-won support as investors who bought at peak cry foul"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Naver Naver headquarters [Yonhap] <\/p>\n

“I bought at the peak \u2014 280,000 won ($203),” one Naver investor wrote online.<\/p>\n

“Mine was 290,000 won,” another replied.<\/p>\n

Naver shares have continued to underperform despite the internet portal’s joint AI factory project with Nvidia, leaving investors who had expected a sustained rally deeply frustrated.<\/p>\n

The stock had surged nearly 30 percent in just two days, briefly touching 300,000 won in what looked like a V-shaped recovery, only to collapse again \u2014 now raising fears that even the 200,000-won support level may not hold.<\/p>\n

Naver shares closed Friday up 1.85 percent at 220,500 won, recovering slightly from Thursday, when the stock broke below 210,000 won during trading and put the 200,000-won floor in jeopardy.<\/p>\n

Investors are in an uproar. Many are believed to have bought near the top as the share price surged.<\/p>\n

The stock shot up after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s meeting with Naver Chairman Lee Hae-jin drew wide attention, only to plunge back toward its recent lows almost immediately.<\/p>\n

The sudden spike drew a wave of new buyers who rushed into Naver shares, and many are now believed to be sitting on heavy losses.<\/p>\n

“I thought Naver \u2014 which had been left behind in the bull market \u2014 was finally staging a V-shaped comeback and breaking out of its slump,” one shareholder said. “Instead it crashed even harder.”<\/p>\n

\"Nvidia Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (left) and Naver Chairman Lee Hae-jin during Huang’s visit to Naver. [Naver] <\/p>\n

Daishin Securities cut its target price for Naver from 330,000 won to 320,000 won, citing “concerns about competition with global companies and worries over the software sector.”<\/p>\n

Brokerages broadly view Naver’s stepped-up investment as an unavoidable move to secure AI competitiveness, but they see rivalry with global big-tech firms as a significant headwind \u2014 particularly given concerns about near-term earnings weakness.<\/p>\n

NH Investment said Naver’s second-quarter results amounted to an earnings shock, with short-term profitability deterioration unavoidable. The brokerage expects AI factory \u2014 data center \u2014 revenue to begin flowing in earnest from 2027, at which point a medium-to-long-term revaluation of the company should follow.<\/p>\n

“Second-quarter operating profit was clearly a disappointing result,” said An Jae-min, an analyst at NH Investment. “But from the perspective of investing for future growth, what matters more than the earnings figures is whether the AI factory buildout is proceeding smoothly.”<\/p>\n

Naver posted second-quarter sales of 3.39 trillion won, up 16.2 percent from a year earlier. Operating profit, however, fell 0.2 percent to 520.3 billion won \u2014 a result the market widely characterized as an earnings shock. Analysts say profitability will continue to erode until at least the second quarter of 2027, when AI factory construction and AI business expansion costs are expected to begin generating meaningful revenue.<\/p>\n

Naver shares were once touted as a tenfold play that could reach 1 million won, sparking a nationwide buying frenzy. A Naver official said at the time that reaching a market capitalization of 150 trillion won \u2014 implying a share price of 1 million won \u2014 was “not so much a goal as a reality to be achieved.”<\/p>\n

park@heraldcorp.com<\/p>\n

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Naver headquarters [Yonhap] “I bought at the peak \u2014 280,000 won ($203),” one Naver investor wrote online. “Mine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[623],"tags":[657],"class_list":["post-135807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-naver","tag-naver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}