YG Entertainment’s second-quarter filing, released August 7, tells two different stories depending on which comparison you use.
Against last year, the numbers are strong: consolidated sales of 127.7 billion won, up 27.2 percent year over year, with operating profit climbing 31.2 percent to 11 billion won. Net profit, however, dropped 32.8 percent to 7.5 billion won.
Against the company’s own first quarter, the picture changes. Q1 brought in 147.1 billion won in sales and 19.4 billion won in operating profit, fueled largely by BLACKPINK’s February comeback and world tour — the group’s mini-album “DEADLINE” moved more than 1.77 million copies in its first week, according to Hanteo Chart. Measured against that quarter, Q2 sales fell roughly 13 percent, and operating profit dropped by more than 40 percent. Operating margin slid from around 13 percent in Q1 to under 9 percent in Q2.
That gap is the actual story here, more than the year-over-year growth headline. It’s a rare, fairly clean look at what YG’s business looks like when its biggest group isn’t the one carrying the quarter.
A Natural Experiment in BLACKPINK’s Economic Weight
YG itself draws the line between the two quarters: Q1’s performance leaned on BLACKPINK’s album and touring cycle, while Q2’s growth came from BABYMONSTER and TREASURE — through new album releases, related merchandise, and digital content. The company noted that merchandise tied to those releases increased, and digital content revenue grew as well.
Put simply, Q1 was BLACKPINK-driven YG, and Q2 was next-generation YG. The difference in operating profit between the two — roughly 19.4 billion won versus 11 billion won — isn’t a knock on BABYMONSTER or TREASURE, both of which grew the business in real terms. But it does show that YG hasn’t yet built a roster capable of replacing what BLACKPINK contributes when the group is fully active.
BABYMONSTER Might Be Becoming YG’s Most Important Post-BLACKPINK Asset
Of the two groups credited with Q2’s growth, BABYMONSTER is the one worth watching most closely going forward. The group is currently in the middle of its second world tour, “CHOOM,” which kicked off in Seoul in June and is built around a genuinely global route — Asia, North America, Oceania, Europe and South America. YG has confirmed 27 shows across 18 cities so far, with more dates still being added in select regions.
That scale matters, though it’s still early to call it decisive. A five-continent tour is a different kind of business than an album cycle — it’s the kind of infrastructure a group needs before its fanbase can be monetized repeatedly through touring, merchandise and ongoing content, the way YG’s biggest franchises historically have been. The fact that merchandise revenue tied to BABYMONSTER’s release grew alongside the tour is a promising early signal, but one quarter and one tour isn’t yet proof that BABYMONSTER has closed the gap BLACKPINK leaves when it’s inactive.
TREASURE’s Ceiling Is Still a Geography Question
TREASURE gets credit in the filing too, and deservedly — the group’s album cycle and merchandise sales were named as a specific driver of Q2 growth. But TREASURE’s commercial footprint has largely been built in Asia. The open question is whether that success can translate into the kind of broad Western touring business BABYMONSTER is currently attempting. Right now, that puts TREASURE and BABYMONSTER on different tracks, even though both contributed to the same quarter’s numbers.
BIGBANG Is the Wildcard for the Second Half
If Q2 exposed a gap, the back half of 2026 is where YG has the clearest shot at closing it. BIGBANG’s “XX: COSMOS” world tour — the group’s first in nine years, since 2017’s “LAST DANCE” — begins August 21 in Gyeonggi Province, marking the trio’s 20th anniversary as a group. G-Dragon, Taeyang and Daesung currently have 33 shows planned across 19 cities spanning North America, Europe, Oceania and Asia.
A tour at that scale doesn’t just sell tickets. It drives merchandise, VIP packages, licensing and renewed interest in the group’s catalog — the same kind of multiplier effect BLACKPINK provided in Q1. With BIGBANG and BABYMONSTER both touring simultaneously in the second half, YG has two active global draws for the first time in years.
YG Still Hasn’t Solved Its Roster Gap
Buried in the filing is a line that may matter more than any of the quarter’s figures: next month, YG will debut a new five-member boy group — its first new boy group since TREASURE launched in 2020. That’s a six-year gap, and it says a lot about the company’s current position relative to HYBE, SM and JYP, all of which have debuted multiple acts across genres in the same window.
YG framed its strategy as sustaining growth through its current artists’ global activity while, in the company’s words, “securing intellectual property from new acts.” That’s a fairly direct acknowledgment of the underlying problem: too much of YG’s revenue still runs through too few IPs — BLACKPINK, BIGBANG, BABYMONSTER, TREASURE and now one unproven new group. When BLACKPINK is active, the numbers jump, as Q1 showed. When BLACKPINK isn’t, the rest of the roster has to carry a heavier share of the business, and Q2 shows there’s currently a real gap when that happens.
The new group’s importance won’t really be about first-week sales. It’s about whether YG can start developing artists on a more regular cycle instead of its historical pattern of long gaps between major debuts — the kind of pipeline other top agencies have leaned on to build multiple simultaneous revenue streams rather than one dominant one.
Where This Leaves YG
The company’s underlying business is diversifying in the right direction — merchandise, digital content and licensing are all growing alongside touring and album sales, in line with where the broader K-pop industry has been heading. But BLACKPINK and BIGBANG won’t be active forever, and that makes BABYMONSTER’s trajectory, and whether September’s debut turns into a repeatable pipeline rather than an isolated bet, the real questions hanging over the rest of the year — more so than any single quarter’s revenue number.
