Shares of South Korea’s leading game and online service provider NHN Corp. started the week on a buoyant note, lifted by its aggressive spending plan to reward shareholders and expand business beyond gaming sector.

Its shares on Monday finished 3.52 percent higher at 58,800 won ($48.55) in Seoul trading. During the morning session, it hit an intra-day high of 60,700 won.

NHN announced Friday that it will buy 170,000 in own shares. The buyback carried out from Aug. 19 to Nov. 18 is expected to cost the company about 10 billion won based on Aug. 14 closing price 58,800 won apiece.

NHN shares lost more than 30 percent over the recent two months and sank below 57,000 won on Friday. Retail and institutional investors net purchased its shares during the period, but foreigners dumped 48.8 billion won worth of shares amid broad selling spree on Korean Inc.

NHN was established after the gaming division separated from the country’s largest internet portal service provider Naver Corp. in August 2013. It has diversified its business portfolio to non-gaming businesses such as music streaming and e-commerce services to offset tougher regulations on web-based board games by the government since 2014.

NHN also launched its mobile payment platform Payco and acquired other payment gateway providers, PNP Secure and Korea Cyber Payment, in 2017 to enhance its payment service. Thanks to such efforts, NHN Payco successfully swung to a profit of 3.3 billion won in the April-June period from loss of 10 billion won three months ago, and transactions at the platform surged to 1.4 trillion won backed by its monthly active users reaching 1.8 million.

Cumulative users of the Payco service topped 10 million, the company added.

Earlier, NHN published mobile game title Dr. Mario World in partnership with Nintendo and Line in July. The label has achieved a milestone of 7.4 million downloads worldwide and earned $1.4 million in revenue on Google Play Store and iOS App Store, according to U.S.-based market research firm Sensor Tower.

By Oh Dae-seok and Lee Ha-yeon

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