The world's largest toy maker, LEGO, is channeling significant resources into software-enabled bricks and sustainable initiatives, aiming to sustain its impressive revenue and profit expansion.

The Danish family-owned company announced on Tuesday that its first-half revenue climbed over 20%, reaching a record 42 billion Danish kroner ($6.6 billion), while net profit surged by a third to 8.6 billion kroner.

Niels Christiansen, who took the helm as CEO in 2017, stated that LEGO is capturing market share in nearly every country, achieving "fairly broad-based" growth fueled by themed sets like the World Cup, Formula 1, and Pokémon.

LEGO experienced rapid expansion in the decade following its near-bankruptcy in 2004. However, that earlier period of explosive growth and an overly complex structure led to a sales slump in 2017.

"We are significantly ramping up our investments," Christiansen explained. "This is the best safeguard against repeating past mistakes. If we don't keep pace with investment, the company's momentum will inevitably wane."

The plastic brick manufacturer has tripled its software engineering team and launched a novel "smart brick" system, debuting first in Star Wars and Pokémon sets, which makes the play experience more digital and interactive.

These smart bricks can emit sounds and generate interactive effects, with plans to roll them out across a wider range of products. Christiansen hinted that additional features will be unlocked in the future.

Through a massive expansion of its product portfolio, LEGO has become one of Europe's most successful private enterprises, and in recent years has also focused on attracting more girls and adult enthusiasts to its building sets.

In the first half, the company boosted its production facility investments by approximately 10% to 4.6 billion kroner, and also spent 1.9 billion kroner to acquire LEGOLAND Discovery Centres from Merlin Entertainments, the operator of LEGOLAND theme parks.

The group is constructing a new plant in the US, has just started operations at a new facility in Vietnam, and is expanding its factories in Hungary and Denmark. LEGO manufactures all its plastic bricks in-house; it is heavily investing in developing recycled materials to replace fossil-fuel-based virgin plastics, without passing the costs on to consumers, which demands tight control over its production capacity.

Christiansen noted that LEGO's sales have nearly tripled over the past decade, but he added, "We don't think we've hit a growth ceiling; there are still plenty of opportunities."

When asked if LEGO was "over-investing" using the windfall from its significant profit growth, he responded, "What would over-investment even look like? But yes, I would say our spending on sustainability, and to some extent digitalization, is higher than most companies."

Christiansen acknowledged that he doesn't believe the current growth rate is sustainable forever, but he hopes LEGO can continue to outpace the broader toy industry's performance.

When questioned whether such massive success could turn into a liability, as it did in 2016-2017, he replied, "That's a very critical question, and we spend a lot of time analyzing it. We remain cautious and clear-headed, never taking this kind of growth for granted. So we aren't hiring blindly on a massive scale. We're much more focused than in the past, while also making forward-looking investments."