LGE comes back into black for Q3

LG Electronics said Wednesday it posted an operating profit of 221 billion won ($195.06 million) for the third quarter of this year, with its mobile business unit coming back into the black.

In its regulatory filing for July-September, the local electronics firm also said that it recorded 12.37 trillion won in total sales and 157 billion won in net profit.

The figures indicate that total sales for the third quarter slid 4 percent from 12.9 trillion won recorded during the same period last year.

But both the operating profit and net profit had been dropping sharply ― at minus 31.9 billion won and minus 413.9 billion won, respectively, in the third quarter last year ― due in part to a decline in sales of feature phones, one of its main businesses then.

The firm’s core mobile business unit’s operating profit had been in the minus range of up to 139.9 billion won in the third quarter of last year due to the comparatively late release of its smartphone lineup.

But this year the mobile communications unit reached 21.5 billion won in operating profit and 2.44 trillion won in sales in the third quarter thanks to strong demand for Long Term Evolution handsets.

“It’s meaningful that the total number of smartphones sold and its total sales both rose for the third quarter,” said LG's chief financial officer Jeong Do-hyun.

He added that the company sold 7 million units of smartphones and 7.4 million units of feature phones between July and September.

“We have high hopes that smartphone sales will reach 10 million units by June of next year,” Jeong said.

LG’s home entertainment unit also posted a steady 5.49 trillion won in sales led by an 8 percent quarterly increase in liquid-crystal display television sales. But the unit’s operating profit sharply dipped to 88.6 billion won from 216.3 billion won on-quarter.

The revenue of the company’s home appliance division saw its sales improve 6.4 percent year-on-year to 2.87 trillion won. Its air conditioning and energy solution unit recorded a 3 percent yearly sales decline to 974 billion won.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)