PER, EPS, PBR and BPS are calculated in-house from the last 4 quarters (2025Q3–2026Q2) · Dividend yield is based on ₩116 per share · Prices as of the 2026-10-02 close
Video and NPU IP license contracts accumulated between 2023 and 2025 are shifting into royalty revenue, while automotive and edge-AI customer diversification is reshaping the earnings structure.
2025 consolidated revenue reached KRW 28.47bn with operating profit of KRW 6.96bn (24.5% operating margin), an improvement from the prior year.
In seasonally slow Q1 2026, operating profit narrowed to KRW 0.18bn, yet royalty revenue rose 31.6% year on year.
The licensing customer base is expanding to include Nasdaq-listed Ambarella, a Japanese automotive semiconductor firm, and a major North American mobile customer.
In September 2026 the company launched a new automotive IP certified to ISO 26262 ASIL-B, reinforcing its push into the automotive market.
Following a large net loss in 2023, the company has posted net profits in 2024 and 2025, though net income volatility relative to operating profit remains notable.
Chips&Media is a semiconductor IP specialist founded in 2003 and listed on KOSDAQ in 2015, supplying video codec IP under license to chipmakers.
Customers use this IP to design smartphone, digital TV, and automotive semiconductor chips, and the company earns both upfront license revenue and royalty revenue tied to unit shipments once products enter mass production.
More recently, the company has expanded its portfolio with the NPU IP 'WAVE-N' and an AI ISP (software-defined image processing) solution developed in partnership with Israel's Visionary.ai, strengthening its position in on-device AI.
Key customers include NXP, a relationship dating back to 2005, major Chinese automotive semiconductor makers, a Japanese automotive chip company that signed a new contract in Q3 2025, a major North American mobile customer whose in-house GPU 'G5' incorporates the company's IP, and Nasdaq-listed edge-AI chipmaker Ambarella, which signed a license in June 2026.
The company has stated that its multimedia IP has been adopted by three of the world's top five automotive semiconductor companies.
Application areas have diversified from smartphones and TVs into automotive infotainment and ADAS, video security, datacenter server GPU/NPU chips, and more recently robotics and drones under the physical-AI theme.
In terms of competitive positioning, global IP peer VeriSilicon is commonly cited as a comparison, while domestically Telechips and Abov Semiconductor are classified in the same industry group.
Given the nature of the business, license revenue recognition is lumpy quarter to quarter depending on contract count and size, while royalty revenue behaves as a more stable, multi-year cash-flow stream once customer products reach mass production.
| Quarter | Revenue | Operating profit | Op. margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025Q2 | ₩6.6B | ₩1.4B | 20.8% |
| 2025Q3 | ₩6.6B | ₩1.5B | 23.0% |
| 2025Q4 | ₩9.9B | ₩3.9B | 39.1% |
| 2026Q1 | ₩5.8B | ₩200M | 3.1% |
| 2026Q2 | ₩7.1B | ₩1.1B | 15.9% |
| Year | Revenue | Operating profit | Net income (parent) | Op. margin | ROE | Debt-to-equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | ₩24.1B | ₩7.3B | ₩10B | 30.3% | 23.7% | 50.3% |
| 2023 | ₩27.6B | ₩7.8B | -₩26.7B | 28.1% | −37.9% | 10.7% |
| 2024 | ₩27.1B | ₩5.3B | ₩10B | 19.5% | 13.2% | 10.8% |
| 2025 | ₩28.5B | ₩7B | ₩5.9B | 24.5% | 7.0% | 25.8% |
Consolidated basis (financial statements including subsidiaries) · Final figures from DART filings · Net income attributable to owners of the parent · Data as of 2026-08-21
Consolidated revenue for 2025 came to KRW 28.47bn, a modest increase from KRW 27.08bn in 2024, while operating profit rose more than 31.9% to KRW 6.96bn from KRW 5.28bn, lifting the operating margin from 19.5% to 24.5%.
Net profit attributable to owners, however, declined to KRW 5.92bn from KRW 10.01bn in 2024, suggesting that non-operating factors had a significant effect on bottom-line volatility.
In 2023, despite a solid operating profit of KRW 7.77bn (28.1% operating margin), the company posted a large net loss of KRW 26.70bn attributable to owners, marking a year with a stark divergence between operating and net results.
On a quarterly basis, Q4 2025 revenue jumped to KRW 9.87bn with operating profit of KRW 3.86bn, driven by a record quarter for license contract signings, before falling sharply to revenue of KRW 5.78bn and operating profit of just KRW 0.18bn in the seasonally weak Q1 2026.
According to press reports, Q1 2026 royalty revenue rose 31.6% year on year to KRW 2.66bn and service revenue grew 69.2%, partly offsetting a decline in license revenue. Q2 2026 showed a recovery with revenue of KRW 7.09bn, operating profit of KRW 1.13bn, and net profit attributable to owners of KRW 2.18bn.
Over the trailing four quarters (Q3 2025 through Q2 2026), net profit attributable to owners totaled KRW 9.28bn, a figure substantially influenced by the one-off large license contract effect recorded in Q4 2025.
Overall, because license revenue is inherently lumpy on a quarterly basis and royalty revenue is recognized with a lag tied to customers' mass-production schedules, judging the underlying trend from any single quarter remains difficult.
The video and multimedia semiconductor IP market that Chips&Media operates in is rapidly expanding beyond smartphones and TVs into automotive, video security, datacenter, and, more recently, robotics and drones under the physical-AI theme, driven by the spread of on-device AI.
As autonomous driving technology advances, the importance of video-processing IP within automotive SoCs is increasing, and the company has broadened its automotive relationships beyond its NXP partnership dating back to 2005 to include Chinese and Japanese automotive semiconductor makers.
The ISO 26262 ASIL-B functional-safety certification obtained in September 2026 is seen as an attempt to move beyond a consumer multimedia IP supplier role and into the higher-value-added automotive semiconductor market.
At CES 2026, the company unveiled an AI ISP designed to shift from fixed-function hardware ISP toward software-defined image processing, an attempt at technical differentiation.
In the competitive landscape, global IP peer VeriSilicon is frequently cited as a comparison, and analysts have noted that its relatively high valuation multiple serves as a reference point when valuing comparable domestic IP companies.
Expansion of datacenter server GPU/NPU chip customers and rising IP adoption demand from IT platform and ASIC companies have also contributed to results.
However, the semiconductor IP market is structurally concentrated among a small number of large fabless and system-semiconductor customers, meaning that adoption decisions by individual customers can materially affect an IP company's earnings cycle.
The company expects the cumulative effect of license contracts signed between 2023 and 2025 to translate into royalty revenue growth starting in 2026, and early signs have already emerged, with Q1 2026 royalty revenue up 31.6% year on year.
Management has stated plans to diversify revenue by industry, maintaining existing automotive projects while securing new licenses in robotics and drones during 2026.
The company aims to capture on-device AI market share through expanded licensing of its NPU IP 'WAVE-N' and an AI ISP developed in cooperation with a global software firm, while also targeting the mobile and camera markets with new standard IP releases such as AV2 and APV.
Geographically, the company outlined a strategy to expand into third countries such as Vietnam while strengthening North American sales and continuing to address AI IP demand in China and domestically.
In June 2026, it signed an 8K ultra-high-resolution video IP license with Nasdaq-listed edge-AI chipmaker Ambarella, broadening cooperation targeting autonomous driving, security, IoT, and robotics markets.
In September, it launched the ISO 26262 ASIL-B certified automotive IP 'WAVE6331X FuSa,' stating its intent to strengthen competitiveness in the ADAS and infotainment automotive semiconductor markets.
The next earnings release is provisionally indicated by a data provider as occurring around November 2026, though this is a tentative schedule and the exact disclosure date will need to be confirmed through the company's future filings.
On the earnings front, the company swung from a large net loss in 2023 to consecutive profitable years in 2024 and 2025, with the operating margin improving from 19.5% in 2024 to 24.5% in 2025.
However, recurring divergence between operating profit and net profit attributable to owners means that non-operating swing factors need to be considered alongside net-income-based metrics when assessing valuation.
On the capital structure side, the debt ratio declined from the 50% range in 2022 to the mid-20% range in 2025, an improvement in financial stability that can serve as a reference point when evaluating the share price relative to net assets.
The semiconductor IP sector is known for wide valuation-multiple dispersion among global peers, and trading multiples for comparable domestic companies also tend to vary depending on each firm's growth stage and the proportion of royalty revenue in its sales mix.
On the dividend side, the company does pay a cash dividend, but the payout size appears to vary year to year in line with earnings volatility. Whether the shift from license to royalty revenue proceeds at the pace management envisions remains the key variable for future valuation discussions.
PER, EPS, PBR and BPS are all calculated in-house (the same method as Naver and Toss) · Dividend yield = cash dividend per share from DART filings (supplemented by KRX) ÷ current price · As of 2026-08-21
License contracts signed between 2023 and 2025 are entering a phase of conversion into royalty revenue as customer products reach mass production. Q1 2026 royalty revenue rose 31.6% year on year, and results showed further recovery in Q2.
Because royalty revenue tends to carry a more stable margin profile than license revenue without proportional fixed-cost burden, this is cited as a basis for potential margin improvement ahead.
Following relationships with NXP and Chinese and Japanese automotive semiconductor makers, the company signed a license with Nasdaq-listed Ambarella in June 2026, broadening its customer base.
In September it launched an ISO 26262 ASIL-B certified automotive IP, attempting entry into the higher-value automotive semiconductor market. The company has stated its IP has already been adopted by three of the world's top five automotive semiconductor companies.
The AI ISP unveiled at CES 2026 represents an attempt to shift from fixed-function hardware ISP to software-defined image processing, developed in cooperation with Israel's Visionary.ai. The NPU IP 'WAVE-N' has been cited as applied within a commercial structure, viewed as a basis for future reference expansion.
The company has also outlined plans for new licenses extending into physical-AI applications such as robots and drones.
License revenue fluctuates significantly on a quarterly basis depending on contract count and size, as illustrated by the sharp contraction in operating profit in Q1 2026 following a record Q4 2025 contract quarter.
If a large contract in a given quarter is not followed by comparable deals, growth momentum could temporarily slow. Royalty revenue recognition can also be delayed depending on customers' mass-production timelines, leaving short-term earnings forecasts subject to uncertainty.
In 2023, despite operating profit of KRW 7.77bn, net profit attributable to owners posted a large loss of KRW 26.70bn. In 2025 as well, while operating profit grew more than 31.9% year on year, net profit attributable to owners actually declined.
This indicates that non-operating factors have a substantial impact on results, and the possibility of similar non-operating swings recurring cannot be ruled out.
Results depend heavily on adoption decisions by a small number of large customers such as NXP, a North American mobile customer, and Ambarella, meaning that a schedule change on a given customer's project could directly affect results.
An exchangeable bond issued in December 2025, representing roughly 511,000 shares, remains deposited and could act as a dilution factor if conversion is exercised.
It is also worth noting that the largest shareholder, a financial investor holding a 31.18% stake, means the ownership structure is centered on a financial investor rather than a founder or strategic holder.
Quarterly variance in license revenue and the recognition lag on royalty revenue make short-term earnings forecasting difficult, and gaps versus market expectations can recur. The earnings gap between Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 illustrates this characteristic.
An exchangeable bond issued in December 2025 remains deposited, and conversion exercise could lead to share dilution in the future.
Because the largest shareholder is financial investor Korea Investment Semiconductor Investment, holding a 31.18% stake, the direction of long-term ownership policy warrants ongoing monitoring.
Amid continued competition with global IP peers such as VeriSilicon, shifts in in-house IP development at system-semiconductor companies or changes in standard technology, such as transition to new codecs like AV2, could alter existing customers' IP adoption direction.
If new technologies such as the AI ISP are adopted by the market more slowly than anticipated, growth in the new business area could be delayed.
This is a provisionally indicated date by a data provider for the Q3 2026 earnings release, and it will be important to confirm whether royalty revenue growth and license contract activity continue.
This period will help gauge whether the large license contract effect seen in Q4 2025 repeats and whether a record annual result is achieved.
It will be worth checking for updates on Ambarella's new SoC mass-production timeline and any follow-on customer adoption announcements related to WAVE6331X FuSa.
Conversion exercise of the exchangeable bond issued in December 2025 and the resulting scale of share dilution should be monitored.
Chips&Media is a semiconductor IP specialist that earns both license and royalty revenue based on its video codec IP, and is entering a phase where license contracts accumulated between 2023 and 2025 begin converting into royalty revenue starting in 2026.
The 2025 consolidated operating margin improved to 24.5% from the prior year, and business diversification continues through an expanding automotive and edge-AI customer base and the acquisition of ISO 26262 ASIL-B certification.
However, quarterly variance in license revenue is significant, and the recurring gap between operating profit and net profit attributable to owners makes it difficult to read earnings trends in a straightforward manner.
Both the large net loss in 2023 and the decline in net profit in 2025 illustrate cases where non-operating factors materially affected results. Potential future share dilution from the exchangeable bond and the financial-investor-centered largest-shareholder structure are additional variables worth watching.
The pace of the license-to-royalty revenue conversion and the mass-production timelines of new customers such as Ambarella remain the key points to observe for the future earnings trajectory.
Report written 2026-09-05 · Data as of 2026-09-04
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