SEOUL - Hybe announced on Monday that it has become the first K-pop agency to surpass 2 trillion won ($1.5 billion) in annual sales for the year 2023, despite the temporary hiatus of group activities from its leading act, BTS, due to mandatory military service.
According to Yonhap News Agency, Hybe credited its landmark revenue figures to strong album sales and concert performances by its roster of artists, including Seventeen, Tomorrow X Together, NewJeans, Enhypen, and solo projects from BTS members.
The firm detailed a year-over-year revenue increase to approximately 2.178 trillion won, a 22.6 percent rise from the previous year. Operating profit also saw a significant boost, climbing to 295.8 billion won, marking a 24.9 percent increase, while net profit surged to 186.6 billion won, a staggering 288.5 percent jump from the year before.
Revenue attributed directly to artist involvement spiked by 51.4 percent, reaching 1.4715 trillion won, although revenue from indirect artist involvement dipped by 12.1 percent to 706.6 billion won. Album sales by Hybe's music labels soared to 970.5 billion won, up 75.8 percent from 2022, and concert revenue increased by 39.1 percent to 359.1 billion won as the concert market rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic's effects.
However, the company observed declines in merchandising and licensing revenue by 17.7 percent, alongside a 15.1 percent drop in content sales. Despite these challenges, Hybe artists dominated the Circle Chart's annual album rankings for 2023, with Seventeen leading with 15.94 million copies sold. Other notable placements included Tomorrow X Together, NewJeans, Enhypen, and BTS members Jungkook and V, who also secured high positions on the chart.
The absence of BTS as a group was counterbalanced by the successful solo debuts of members Jimin and Jungkook on the U.S. Billboard's Hot 100 main singles chart, alongside Tomorrow X Together and NewJeans achieving top positions on the Billboard 200 albums chart. This achievement nearly doubled Hybe's total album sales from 22.2 million copies to 43.6 million copies last year.
Hybe also reported an expansion in its concert activities, with the number of artists holding concerts growing from four to seven groups, and the total number of concerts increasing from 78 to 125. Highlighted among the most successful tours were BTS Suga's sold-out solo concert tour, Seventeen's "Follow" tour, and the first North American stadium and Japanese dome tours by Tomorrow X Together and Enhypen, alongside Le Sserafim's inaugural world tour.
BARCELONA - SK Telecom Co., South Korea's leading mobile carrier, announced on Monday its plan to form a joint venture with four other global telecommunications companies. This initiative aims to create large language models (LLMs) specifically designed to meet the demands of the telecom industry.According to Yonhap News Agency, this collaborative effort will include Germany's Deutsche Telekom, the United Arab Emirates' e& Group, Singapore's Singtel, and Japan's Softbank. The formation of this joint venture is scheduled for later this year.
The announcement was made at the Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2024, during the first meeting of the Global Telco AI Alliance. The joint venture's primary focus will be the development of LLMs to enhance telecommunications companies' customer service capabilities through digital assistants and chatbots. The partners plan to build multilingual LLMs that will support languages such as Korean, English, German, Arabic, and Japanese, with the potential inclusion of more languages to be decided by the founding members.
SK Telecom emphasized the joint venture's goal to cater to a worldwide customer base of approximately 1.3 billion people across 50 countries. This includes SK Telecom's own 31 million subscribers and Deutsche Telekom's 250 million subscriptions. SK Telecom's CEO, Ryu Young-sang, highlighted the strategic importance of developing industry-specific LLMs. "We as telcos need to develop tailored LLMs for the telco industry to make telco operations more efficient, which is a low-hanging fruit. Our ultimate goal is to discover new business models by redefining relationships with customers," Ryu stated.
This international partnership marks a significant step toward leveraging artificial intelligence to revolutionize customer interactions and operational efficiency in the telecom sector, setting a precedent for future collaborations in the industry.