South Korea’s HYBE, the entertainment company behind BTS, has reported the highest quarterly revenue and operating profit in its history.
In its earnings release, published on Tuesday, November 3, the company said it generated KRW 1.53 trillion in revenue in the third quarter of 2026. KRW is the South Korean won, and the figure is approximately $1.08 billion.
Revenue and profit#
Revenue rose 109.8% year-on-year (YoY) and 5.2% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ), surpassing the KRW 1.45 trillion record HYBE set in the second quarter.
It was the first quarter in which HYBE’s revenue, converted into US dollars, topped $1 billion. The company first passed KRW 1 trillion in the second quarter, but a weaker won at that time meant that quarter’s revenue converted to around $967 million.
Operating profit reached KRW 188.5 billion ($133 million), up 10.3% QoQ, with an operating margin of 12.4%. In the third quarter of 2025, HYBE posted an operating loss of KRW 42.2 billion.
Net profit fell 89.7% QoQ to KRW 11.3 billion ($8 million), from KRW 109.8 billion in the second quarter. Net profit attributable to HYBE’s controlling interest was a loss of KRW 6.8 billion.
Non-operating expenses totaled KRW 142.8 billion in the third quarter, up from KRW 43.7 billion in the second. HYBE’s chief financial officer (CFO), Kyung-Jun Lee, said most of that came from foreign exchange valuation losses on the company’s large foreign-currency cash and deposit holdings, as the won strengthened during the quarter.
Concerts and merchandise#
Concert revenue reached a quarterly record of KRW 726.8 billion ($512 million), up 196.7% YoY and 12.2% QoQ. The growth was led by the European and United States legs of BTS’s ARIRANG world tour.
HYBE said BTS averaged around 70,000 fans per show in the quarter. The company’s third-quarter concert revenue alone equaled about 95% of the KRW 763.9 billion it generated from concerts across the whole of 2025.
Merchandise and licensing revenue also set a quarterly record, rising 98.7% YoY and 7.7% QoQ to KRW 334.6 billion ($236 million). This included KRW 107 billion ($75 million) from merchandise sold at BTS’s North American tour dates during the quarter.
HYBE’s investor presentation said around 2 million merchandise units were sold across the full North American run, which covered 31 BTS shows in 12 cities between April and September.
Recorded music revenue fell 13.4% QoQ to KRW 282.8 billion ($199 million), but was up 49.0% YoY. According to HYBE, streaming accounted for approximately 30% of recorded music revenue.
Artists and label strategy#
HYBE highlighted what it calls its “multi-home, multi-genre” strategy, pointing to KATSEYE in the United States and &TEAM in Japan.
- ENHYPEN’s eighth mini album, THE SIN : BLISS, topped the Billboard 200 chart in the United States.
- CORTIS’s second EP, GREENGREEN, passed 4 million cumulative copies sold in September.
- KATSEYE’s third EP, WILD, topped the Billboard 200 with first-week US sales of 150,000 copies, around five times the first-week sales of the group’s previous release, according to HYBE.
- All 31 shows on KATSEYE’s European and North American tour, which covers 27 cities, sold out.
- &TEAM, based in Japan, has had four consecutive million-selling releases across Japan and South Korea. Its second Korean mini album, Mark on Me, entered the Billboard 200 at No. 20.
In October, HYBE expanded HYBE LABEL SERVICE, which HYBE AMERICA formally launched in October 2025, into HYBE Global Label Services. The company-wide unit covers distribution, marketing and promotion for all of HYBE’s labels. It is led by President Juan S. Arenas, who was previously Chief Intellectual Property Officer at HYBE AMERICA.
HYBE’s superfan platform, Weverse, averaged 14.22 million monthly active users (MAU) in the third quarter, down from a record 14.43 million in the second quarter.
Outlook#
HYBE said BTS will continue its world tour through the first half of 2027 while working on music and other projects. The company will also stage its first Weverse Con Festival outside South Korea, in New Delhi, in March 2027.
Currency conversions in this article use the average third-quarter 2026 exchange rate of approximately 1,419 KRW to the US dollar, according to Bank of Korea data. The second-quarter figure was converted at that quarter’s average rate of approximately 1,500 KRW to the US dollar.
