Company DigestFundingLast updated: 6 November 2024

Kakao Bank Posts Record Quarterly Net Profit of 124 Billion Won in Q3 2024 as Interest Income and Customer Growth Lift Operating Profit 36.2%

Kakao Bank Corp., the banking subsidiary of South Korea's parent company Kakao, closed the third quarter of 2024 with a net profit of 124 billion won (about US$89.9 million), up 30.1% year-on-year and the highest quarterly figure in the bank's history. Operating profit rose 36.2% to 174 billion won, revenue grew 14% to 746 billion won, and interest income, the bank's largest revenue line, advanced 14% to 611 billion won. The customer base reached 24.43 million at the end of September 2024, an increase of 2.15 million over twelve months. According to the regulatory filing, the record quarter was driven by rising interest income and an expanding customer base.

Banknote counting machine at a bank counter

Q3 2024: a record quarterly net profit

November 6, 2024 — Kakao Bank Corp. reported its results for the third quarter of 2024, as reported by the Yonhap News Agency. The banking subsidiary of parent company Kakao operates in South Korea, and its corporate announcements and investor materials are published on the company website at https://www.kakaobank.com/.

The key reported figures for the third quarter of 2024 are as follows:

net profit — 124 billion won (about US$89.9 million), up 30.1% year-on-year and a record quarterly high;
operating profit — 174 billion won, up 36.2% year-on-year;
revenue — 746 billion won, up 14% year-on-year, including interest income of 611 billion won, also up 14%.

All three lines moved up in the same quarter, but at different speeds: operating profit grew fastest at 36.2%, net profit followed at 30.1%, and revenue at 14%. The net result is described as a quarterly high, which makes the third quarter of 2024 the strongest reporting period in the bank's history on that line, and it puts the profit lines clearly ahead of the top line in growth terms.

The two drivers named in the filing

The regulatory filing attributes the gains to two factors:

rising interest income, which reached 611 billion won in the quarter, up 14% year-on-year;
an expanding customer base, which stood at 24.43 million at the end of September 2024, up 2.15 million from a year earlier.

Interest income and customer growth sit on opposite sides of the same result: the first lifts the revenue side of the quarter, the second widens the base on which future interest income can be earned. The filing presents the two together as the explanation for the record net profit, and the reported figures support that reading, since both lines named as drivers expanded in double digits over the same twelve months.

Revenue mix: interest income keeps an 82% share

Revenue of 746 billion won grew 14% year-on-year, and interest income of 611 billion won grew at exactly the same 14% pace. Because the two lines expanded in step, the share of interest income in total revenue stayed essentially unchanged: 611 billion won against 746 billion won is about 82% of the quarter's revenue, the same ratio the two identical growth rates imply for the year-earlier quarter. The arithmetic is simple division on the reported figures, and it shows how concentrated the bank's revenue remains in its core lending business.

The concentration also explains why the filing leads with interest income when explaining the record: with roughly four fifths of revenue coming from interest, a 14% expansion of that line moves the whole result. The 36.2% jump in operating profit on top of it indicates that costs grew more slowly than income over the same period, allowing the revenue expansion to translate into a disproportionately larger gain at the operating line.

Customer base: 24.43 million and 2.15 million added in a year

The bank counted 24.43 million customers at the end of September 2024, 2.15 million more than twelve months earlier. Subtracting the annual addition from the closing figure implies a base of about 22.28 million customers a year before; this is again arithmetic on the reported numbers rather than a separately disclosed figure, but it frames the scale of the annual addition against the stock it was added to.

An addition of 2.15 million customers in a single year is the second pillar of the filing's explanation. Each new customer is a potential deposit and loan relationship, so the expanding base supports the interest-income line that produced the record quarter. The two drivers therefore reinforce each other rather than acting independently: the customer base feeds the interest income, and the interest income is what turned the quarter into a record.

Separate books from parent Kakao

Kakao Bank is the banking subsidiary of parent company Kakao, and its quarterly report stands on its own. The parent company published its own third-quarter 2024 results on November 7, 2024, one day after the bank's filing, and the two sets of figures cover different businesses: they should not be combined or compared line by line. The record 124 billion won net profit reported here belongs to the bank alone.

For readers tracking the group, the sequence of the two publications matters. The bank's filing of November 6, 2024 precedes the parent's report of November 7, 2024, and each company's operating profit, net profit and revenue lines are disclosed within its own accounting perimeter. Any comparison between the bank's 36.2% operating profit growth and the parent's quarterly result would mix two different perimeters and is not supported by the filings.