BTS may be on hiatus (military service included) but that hasn’t prevented the company behind the K-Pop group, Hybe, from achieving record first-quarter financial results.
The company posted revenues of 410.6 billion KRW (around $306m at current exchange rates) and an operating profit of 52.5bn KRW ($39.1m) in the first quarter of this year. Those are year-on-year increases of 44.1% and 41.7%, respectively.
The company says its WeVerse superfan platform has added nearly a million monthly active users since the start of the year, taking it to nearly 9.4 million in total.
The average user spent 251 minutes per month on the platform, and the Weverse Live livestreaming service attracted 460 million views in the first quarter.
It’s welcome news for Hybe, which recently had to abandon its attempt to acquire a 40% stake in fellow Korean music company SM Entertainment.
The company is unlikely to see the results as an excuse for complacency however: chairman Bang Si Hyuk recently warned that K-Pop growth is slowing in the US and south-east Asia, and that in BTS’s absence, the K-Pop industry needs to work hard to fill the gap and create new fandoms around other artists.
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