Kakao's market cap up 6.6% to narrow gap with SK hynix

Kakao rose 6.6 percent in closing on Wednesday from the previous day, pushing its market capitalization to an all-time high of 75.2 trillion won to narrow the gap with the incumbent No. 2 chipmaker SK hynix.

The increased market cap solidified Kakao’s position at No. 3 on the Korea Exchange, trailing Samsung Electronics and SK hynix.

SK hynix’s market cap was at 90 trillion won on the same day.

Over the five previous trading days, the market cap gap between SK hynix and Kakao was halved to 15 trillion won.

Kakao shares are expected to be bolstered by the features update on its flagship KakaoTalk, accelerating its transition to a business messenger similar to Facebook’s WhatsApp Business.

Kakao is set to add to its Kakao Channel business, which would allow corporate clients to showcase their products or services by launching business accounts.

It also has an in-app advertisement service dubbed KakaoTalk Biz Board.

Kakao is set to charge corporate clients up to 20 won for every marketing message and 7.5 won for each e-commerce push notification.

Consequently, transactions on Kakao Commerce platform is estimated to l rise 57.3 percent to 6.7 trillion won through 2021, according to Kyobo Securities analyst Park Ji-won.

Revenue through advertisement messages and payments over Kakao Pay are both estimated to gain nearly 50 percent on-year, Park added.

Meanwhile, the market cap of Kakao's rival Naver reached 70 trillion won to become the fourth-largest of South Korea’s stock market.