KT posts highest Q1-Q3 operating profit since 2012

KT Corp., South Korea’s major telecommunications firm, posted 1.5 trillion won ($1.1 billion) in cumulative operating profit for the first three quarters of 2022. It is the first time since 2012 that the company has achieved more than 1 trillion won in operating profit during the first nine months of the year.  

On Nov. 8, the telecom company announced 6.5 trillion won in revenue and 452.9 billion won in operating profit during the third quarter on a consolidated basis. The amounts rose 4.2% and 18.4%, respectively, compared with the same period in 2021.

The firm enhanced profitability with the growth of its business-to-business (B2B) services, as well as the accelerated transformation of its businesses into digital platforms, a KT official said.

Its B2B platform unit posted 592.4 billion won in third-quarter revenue, up 9.9% on-year. The cumulative orders the unit won during the first three quarters increased by 21% compared with the same period last year, thanks to enterprises’ rising demand for digital transformation.

Business-to-consumer telecom services posted 2.4 trillion won in revenue during the third quarter, with only a 0.6% rise from the same period in 2021. The number of users for 5G mobile networks increased to 7,960,000, making up 57% of the members who use its wireless services.

The B2C platform business achieved 558.5 billion won in revenue during the July-September quarter, up 3.6% from the same period last year.

KT’s content unit posted 301.2 billion won in third-quarter revenue, up 24.7% from the same period of 2021, backed by the success of the Netflix drama series “Extraordinary Attorney Woo.” KT’s subsidiary KT Studio Genie co-produced the drama, which topped the streaming giant's non-English TV content in July.

Meanwhile, KT CEO Ku Hyeon-mo officially expressed his intention to serve a second term on Tuesday. Inaugurated in 2020, the CEO is supposed to end his first term in March 2023. 

KT held a board meeting on the same day and put Ku on the preferred candidates’ list. The board will compose a CEO selection committee to judge Ku’s qualifications. He is expected to serve a second term once he gets the nod at the committee, board and shareholders' meetings.

Write to Seung-Woo Lee at leeswoo@hankyung.com
Jihyun Kim edited this article.