HYBE's operating profit was ₩49bn. One expense line was ₩295bn.
HYBE out-earned Korea's other three listed K-pop majors combined in FY2025 revenue — but posted the only net loss among them, ₩254.4bn. The swing traces to one filed line, six times the size of operating profit, that is never itemised.
AI-assisted, human-reviewed sourcing. Figures are pulled programmatically from the official sources listed at the end of this article and checked by an editor before publication.
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HYBE filed its FY2025 annual report with Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service on 20 March 2026. Revenue, on a consolidated basis, was ₩2.65 trillion — more than SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment combined. Operating profit was ₩49.3 billion, positive. Net income was negative ₩254.4 billion.
The four biggest listed K-pop agencies by revenue
| Company | Revenue (FY2025) | Operating profit | Net income |
|---|---|---|---|
| HYBE | ₩2.65tn | ₩49.3bn | −₩254.4bn |
| SM Entertainment | ₩1.17tn | ₩183.0bn | +₩359.4bn |
| JYP Entertainment | ₩821.9bn | ₩155.2bn | +₩160.6bn |
| YG Entertainment | ₩545.4bn | ₩71.3bn | +₩53.7bn |
Consolidated (CFS) figures, DART FY2025 annual reports. HYBE’s revenue alone exceeds SM, JYP and YG’s combined.
Three of the four turned a profitable year into a profitable bottom line. HYBE turned a profitable year — operating profit was positive, same as the other three — into the only loss among them, and a large one: bigger in magnitude than YG’s entire net income, more than two-thirds the size of SM’s.
Where the ₩49.3bn went
DART’s filing lets you walk the full distance from operating profit to net loss, line by line, and every number below is filed, not estimated:
| Line (filed) | Amount |
|---|---|
| Operating profit | +₩49.3bn |
| Other income (기타수익) | +₩9.7bn |
| 기타비용 (other expenses) | −₩295.0bn |
| Equity-method income | +₩4.1bn |
| Equity-method loss | −₩15.9bn |
| Financial income | +₩231.0bn |
| Financial cost | −₩160.6bn |
| = Pre-tax loss | −₩177.4bn |
| Tax | −₩77.0bn |
| = Net loss | −₩254.4bn |
Add the seven lines above operating profit’s row and they reconcile exactly to HYBE’s own filed pre-tax figure — we checked the arithmetic against DART’s reported total, not the other way around. Financial income and financial cost roughly offset (net +₩70.4bn), and the equity-method lines are a minor net drag (−₩11.7bn). One line does almost all of the work: ₩295.0 billion of “other expenses” — six times the size of operating profit itself.
The question the filing doesn’t answer
DART’s summary financial statement reports 기타비용 (other expenses) as a single total. It does not break out what is inside it — an impairment, a write-down, a legal settlement, a restructuring charge, or some combination — at the level of the filing we read. We looked for an itemisation in the same filing and did not find one; we did not go further into footnote-level disclosure to itemise it ourselves.
That is not a criticism of HYBE’s disclosure — “other expenses” is a standard line in a Korean consolidated income statement, and plenty of large one-off items get filed under it before more detail follows in the full annual report’s notes. It is simply the honest state of what a reader gets from the headline financial statement: a company that made money running its business, and a single unitemised line six times that size that took the year into loss.
This is a record of what four companies filed with DART for fiscal year 2025, not investment advice, and not a judgement on any of them — the open question, for now, stays open.
Data & Verification Notes
- Data as of
- Sources
- Financial Supervisory Service (Korea, Open DART) — fnlttSinglAcnt / fnlttSinglAcntAll (single-company key accounts and full comprehensive income statement), FY2025 annual report, corp code 01204056
- Cross-checks
- All six figures below (operating profit, other income, other expenses, equity-method income/loss, financial income/financial cost) sum exactly to HYBE's filed pre-tax loss of ₩177,357,239,000: 49,318,276,000 + 9,692,194,000 − 295,030,383,000 + 4,136,961,000 − 15,879,156,000 + 231,048,078,000 − 160,643,209,000 = −177,357,239,000. We did not compute pre-tax loss ourselves; we verified our reading of the line items against DART's own reported total
- Consolidated (CFS) figures used throughout, from the FY2025 (2025-01-01 to 2025-12-31) annual report, filed 20 March 2026 (rcept_no 20260320000802)
- HYBE's FY2025 revenue, ₩2,649,870,246,000, exceeds the sum of SM (₩1,174,934,814,159), YG (₩545,404,261,988) and JYP (₩821,854,634,614) combined — ₩2,542,193,710,761 — by about 4.2%
- Of Korea's four largest listed K-pop agencies by revenue, HYBE is the only one with a net loss in FY2025: SM +₩359.4bn, JYP +₩160.6bn, YG +₩53.7bn, HYBE −₩254.4bn
- The two smaller listed agencies checked, FNC and Cube, also posted net losses (−₩11.8bn and −₩5.9bn), but from a much smaller revenue base (₩102.4bn and ₩87.2bn) — not comparable in scale to the big four
- Excluded figures
- What is inside the ₩295,030,383,000 line DART labels 기타비용 (other expenses). DART's summary financial statement reports it as a single total; it is not broken into sub-items (impairment, restructuring, litigation, etc.) at this level of the filing. We did not read the footnotes of the full annual report to itemise it — checked and not found at the summary-statement level
- Why the loss occurred, or any judgement on HYBE's business performance, management, or share price. This reports what was filed, not investment advice
- CJ E&M Corporation (KRX 130960), initially in our comparison set — DART returned no FY2025 data for this corp code, consistent with our earlier finding that this entity is not a currently active listed issuer distinct from CJ ENM
- Any comparison of the 'other expenses' composition across agencies — only HYBE's swing was large enough to change the sign of net income, so only HYBE's is itemised here
- Instruments
- 352820, 041510, 122870, 035900
The full dataset behind these figures — every listed company, every row — is available to license. SeoulMarkets data for licence →
Not investment advice. SMarkets publishes data journalism for general information only. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security — any investment you make is at your own risk and responsibility. Figures are derived from official public data sources and may be revised by the issuing agency. Verify independently before acting.
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