LINE: quarterly revenue 2020

In the third quarter of 2020, the Japanese messaging app company LINE Corporation generated a revenue of close to 63 billion Japanese yen. This constituted an increase of 12.4 percent compared to the same quarter of the previous year.

A steady growth path

LINE Corporation was initially founded under the name Hangame Japan in 2000 and renamed to NHN Japan in 2003. The messenger app LINE, for which the company is widely known today, was first introduced in 2011 as a response to the Great East Japan Earthquake. As the earthquake had triggered a tsunami that destroyed phone lines in many places, an alternative way of communicating became necessary, and the messenger app was quickly embraced by Japanese consumers. Following the overwhelming success of LINE, the company changed its name again and has operated as LINE Corporation since April 2013. Both the quarterly revenue of the company and the number of monthly active users in Japan showed a clear growth trajectory in the years that followed. The company gradually expanded its business operations by introducing new services, such as LINE Manga in 2013, LINE Pay in 2014, and LINE Music in 2015. In addition, LINE Corporation also ventured into several foreign markets. Aside from Japan, the app today has a large user base in Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Merger with Z Holdings

LINE Corporation, which had operated as a subsidiary of Naver Corporation for many years, merged with Yahoo Japan operator and SoftBank Corp. subsidiary Z Holdings Corporation in March 2021. As a result of this merger, both Naver Corporation and SoftBank Corp. each hold 50 percent in a newly established company called A Holdings Corporation, which in turn is a majority shareholder of Z Holdings Corporation. Upon the completion of the business integration, which is supposed to create synergies and improve competitiveness, it was announced that the Z Holdings Group would not only continue to focus on the existing core businesses of Z Holdings and LINE, but would in addition focus on four new business areas. These comprise the categories commerce, “local vertical”, which is supposed to support businesses’ digital transformation through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), FinTech, and public services.