DeNA eyes double digit 10/11 profit growth

By Sachi Izumi

TOKYO (Reuters) - DeNA Co (2432.T), Japan's No. 2 social networking service operator, aims to return to double-digit profit growth next financial year as it improves its offering of games and other contents.

Speaking at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in Tokyo, Chief Executive Tomoko Namba also said it was looking for a local partner and may invest in it to boost its two-year-old Chinese business, aiming to make its overseas operations one of its main earnings pillars in three years.

It also operates an English social networking site.

"Mobile phones are still mainly used for short messaging in China, but the market is so huge and usage of cell phones as Internet devices is becoming popular very fast," she said.

"Jia Jia Cheng (DeNA's Chinese social networking site) has not been very successful, and we have to reconsider our strategy."

DeNA operates a mobile game community called Moba-ge-town in Japan, which has nearly 14 million users and is popular among young mobile phone users as it offers games as well as other content found on social networking sites such as blogs.

DeNA's operating profit jumped 25 percent in the financial year ended March 2009, but it expects growth to slow to 1 percent this year.

"We will focus on activating communities as much as we can this year rather than on earnings," Namba said. "We plan to build the foundation so that we can keep growing healthily from next financial year."