NHN Corp., South Korea’s top Internet portal operator, said Thursday its fourth-quarter earnings jumped

49.1 percent from a year earlier, buoyed by increased profit from search advertising and new services such as the mobile messenger LINE.

Net profit reached 169 billion won ($155 million) in the October-December period, compared with a profit of 113.3 billion won the previous year, NHN said in a regulatory filing.

Revenue rose 13.8 percent on-year to 652 billion won last year, and operating profit gained 10.6 percent to 200.2 billion won in the cited period.

NHN attributed the stronger bottom line to growing profit from its search advertising business.

The company also said other IT services, such as its flagship messenger service LINE, shored up earnings. Last month, NHN said the mobile messenger service achieved 100 million downloads globally. (Yonhap News)