breach continued to weigh on the business. Founder and CEO Bom Kim said the worst period for growth appears to be over. “January marked the low point in our product commerce revenue growth rate. Each month since has improved on a year-over-year basis, and the pace of improvement strengthened through February and March,” Bom Kim said.  The breach and what it costs The incident itself remains one of the most jarring corporate security failures in South Korea. Coupang alleged a former employee retained cryptographic signing keys after leaving the company and used them to access customer databases via overseas servers for nearly five months, beginning in June 2025. By the time Coupang’s systems flagged unusual activity in November, names, phone numbers, email addresses, delivery addresses, and order histories of 33.7 million accounts had already been compromised.  Payment information was not compromised, but the amount of personal data involved made the breach one of the country’s most serious corporate security failures in recent memory. To limit the backlash, Coupang then announced a compensation package of 1.69 trillion won (approximately US$1.17 billion) in the form of platform vouchers distributed to all 33.7 million affected customers, including those who had since deleted their accounts. Speaking on Tuesday’s call, CFO Gaurav Anand identified two distinct but related forces compressing margins simultaneously.  The first was the direct cost of those vouchers, which Anand described as “one-time in nature,” with the bulk of the impact concentrated in Q1 and a modest tail expected into early Q2. The second was a widening gap between Coupang’s cost base and its actual demand.  “Much of our cost base was sized for the demand trajectory we were on before the incident,” Anand said on the call.  Warehouses, logistics networks, and supply chain commitments were all planned around continued growth. Instead, customer activity slowed, leaving the company paying for excess capacity and inventory that were no longer fully utilised. Kim acknowledged the mismatch directly, saying actual demand fell short of what the company had prepared for. Even so, the situation may not be as bad as it sounds. Buried in the earnings narrative, but arguably the most important signal in the results is the behaviour of Coupang’s Wow membership base. Kim said the vast majority of Wow members never left, and they have continued to compound their spend at double-digit rates throughout this period.  Of those who did cancel their memberships following the breach, a majority have since returned. By the end of April, the company said it had recovered nearly 80 per cent of the membership decline that followed the incident. The Taiwan distraction  Against all of this, Coupang is simultaneously building a business in Taiwan that is absorbing capital at a significant clip. Developing offerings – the segment that includes Taiwan, its Eats food delivery service, and Rocket Now in Japan – posted revenues of US$1.3 billion, up 28 per cent year-over-year. But segment-adjusted EBITDA losses were US$329 million, up $161 million from a year ago. The company has guided for between US$950 million and US$1 billion in developing offerings losses for the full year. “Cohort retention behaviour is reminiscent of what we saw in the early years of Product Commerce in Korea. Our conviction in the long-term opportunity, both to “wow” customers and to generate attractive returns on the capital we’re deploying, grows stronger each quarter,” Kim said.  Coupang’s own last-mile delivery network in Taiwan now covers the vast majority of its volume, with next-day delivery guarantees continuing to expand. The parallel to the Korean origin story is the company’s central argument for why the losses are worth bearing. Further reading: When trust breaks: Inside Coupang’s most serious test yet.