Daum Q1 net jumps 66 pct on strong ad sales

SEOUL, May 20 (Yonhap) -- Daum Communications Corp., the operator of South Korea's second-most visited search engine, said Friday that its first-quarter earnings jumped 66 percent from a year ago, driven by higher advertisement sales. Net income reached 25.6 billion won (US$23.6 million) in the January-March period, compared with 15.4 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing. Sales rose 33.7 percent on-year to 97.2 billion won and operating profit also increased 60.4 percent to 30.6 billion won, it said. The results were based on international financial reporting standards (IFRS). The operator of the Daum Web portal site said increased online advertisement sales fueled the first-quarter bottom line growth. Revenues from display and banner ads grew 56.3 percent from a year ago. Its partnership with SK Communications Inc., the Web search market's No. 3 player, to share their content starting in June is expected to help the two companies compete with the industry juggernaut NHN Corp., Daum said. In April, Daum and NHN separately filed antitrust complaints against Google Inc. with the country's antitrust watchdog, accusing the U.S. search engine of limiting the ability to install rivals' search engines on Android-based smartphones.