Naver stock price soars, despite predictions of a 10-fold increase, executives sell large amounts in South Korea

As the share price of South Korea's national portal site Naver continues to rise, it has been revealed that company executives are selling their shares.
According to the Korean IT industry, six Naver executives sold a total of 12,594 shares worth about 2.999 billion won (about 319.18 million yen) last month.
The largest seller was Kim Seung Un, leader of business and services, who sold 9,630 shares at 236,250 won each, raising 2.274 billion won (approximately 242 million yen).
Another executive sold 500 shares for 291,000 won, the highest price paid for each sale.
The shares sold this time are believed to be stock bonuses paid by Naver to its executives.
Through the SU system, Naver shares are awarded according to the relative stock price growth rate against the KOSPI 200 index. Naver's stock price has risen 38.67% in one month and is on an upward trend.
The Lee Jae-myung administration appointed Ha Jung, head of Naver's Cloud AI Innovation Center, as the first chief of AI future planning, and further appointed Naver's Han So
The appointment of former CEO Lee Seung-sook as Minister of Small and Medium Enterprises has drawn investor interest. The promotion of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry is also expected to benefit the country. The Ministry of Science, ICT and Technology
The company is looking for companies to participate in the development of its own foundation model until the 21st of this month. As Naver has expressed its intention to participate in the project, it is considered a leading player in the IT industry.
The Ministry of Science, Technology and ICT plans to provide the selected AI development companies with graphics processing units (GPUs), data sets and other resources.
South Korean securities firms are raising their target share prices for Naver. Hana Securities and Samsung Securities raised their target prices to 320,000 won and 350,000 won, respectively.
NH Investment Securities revised its target price to 380,000 won, the highest target price. In 2021, when the stock price is in the 400,000 won range, the target price is 1 million won and the market capitalization is 150 trillion won.
"With the appointment of Ha Jung Woo as chief, the government's policy support for the domestic AI industry will be strengthened," said Ahn Jae-min, a researcher at NH Investment Securities.
"We expect Naver's AI competitiveness to be renewed in various areas, including sovereign AI, large-scale language models (LLM), and Internet data centers (IDC)," the report said.
"It will be a big hit," he said.