Loyal customers spend at record highs post-fine, new members keep joining, CEO says Coupang headquarters in Seoul (Yoon Chang-bin/The Korea Herald) E-commerce giant Coupang posted its largest quarterly operating loss since its New York listing in 2021, as a fine tied to last year's data breach swamped otherwise solid revenue growth.The company said Wednesday that revenue for the April-June period rose 10 percent on-year on a constant currency basis to $8.9 billion. The operating loss widened to $556 million from an operating profit of $149 million a year earlier.Combined with the first quarter's $242 million operating loss, Coupang's first-half operating loss surpassed 1 trillion won for the first time at 1.13 trillion won ($798 million), nearly matching its combined operating profit for all of 2024 and 2025.Behind the loss sits a $410 million fine levied in June by Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission over last year's data breach and unauthorized collection of user data. Coupang booked the charge within operating expenses, Chief Financial Officer Gaurav Anand said, adding that the fine remains under judicial review and the company plans to appeal.Excluding the fine, the adjusted operating loss was $146 million. The adjusted net loss was $160 million, compared with net income of $31 million last year.Still, customer fallout is fading, according to founder and CEO Bom Kim. Most of the customer base held, and disrupted spending has since returned to its prior growth path."The spend that did leave was a minority of the total, and most of it has already returned," Kim said during the second-quarter earnings call Wednesday, adding that customers now spend above their pre-incident levels. “On top of that, new customers keep arriving. Total Wow membership, for example, now exceeds its level before the incident.”Coupang's product commerce segment, comprising Rocket Delivery, Rocket Fresh, Rocket Growth and Marketplace, saw net revenue grow 8 percent on-year to $7.4 billion, while active customers climbed 3 percent to 24.7 million.Kim framed the margin hit as a temporary mismatch between fixed costs and demand, since Coupang built its logistics capacity for a pre-incident demand curve that revenue has yet to catch up to, and it has chosen not to cut that capacity.As selection expands, he added, Coupang breaks the usual trade-off between price, selection and speed, pulling more customer spending onto the platform. "Spend growth is wallet-share growth," he said.As for the developing offerings segment, which includes Taiwan Rocket Delivery, Farfetch, Coupang Eats and Rocket Now in Japan, revenue rose 24 percent on-year to $1.4 billion.Taiwan led that growth on the back of Coupang's Korean playbook, reaching Dawn Delivery in a single year, compared with four years in Korea.“Our early cohorts in Taiwan are retaining and growing their spend, tracing the curve Korea’s cohorts produced at the same age," Kim said. "Taiwan is on the same compounding curve as Korea, just earlier on it."Elsewhere, Kim cited Eats, where a modest bet grew into a service reaching millions as Korea's food delivery market more than quadrupled. Rocket Now, its newer counterpart in Japan, is still in its early stages, but the two are now sustainable combined.For the third quarter, Coupang guided to 8 to 9 percent constant-currency revenue growth, even as adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization margin is forecast to contract another 300 to 400 basis points.Even as cash flow tightened, Coupang kept buying back stock, repurchasing 23 million Class A shares for $459 million during the quarter under the $1 billion program it authorized in the first quarter.“We continue to be opportunistic in our capital allocation as we identify opportunities to generate long-term returns for our shareholders,” Anand said.