SK Telecom said Thursday it posted about 4.01 trillion won ($3.54 billion) in sales and 384.6 billion won in operating profit in April-June, bringing its profit figure down 42.8 percent from the same period last year.
In its quarterly regulatory filing, the country’s largest mobile carrier also said that its net profit reached 120.55 billion won, down more than 74 percent from the 465.43 billion won in the second quarter of last year.
This quarter’s sales figure improved 0.8 percent from the previous quarter but decreased 0.6 percent from the 4.03 trillion won in April-June last year.
The government’s directive to lower basic mobile service costs for its customers by 1,000 won along with soaring marketing costs to secure subscribers for its high-speed Long Term Evolution smartphones contributed to the figures, said company officials.
Its halting of the satellite digital media broadcasting service also added to the losses in that period, its officials said.
The company, however, was able to see improvement in its average revenue per user ― an increase of 1.8 percent ― for the first time in the past three quarters due to its securing of premium LTE smartphone owners.
Subscribers of LTE phones running on the faster and upgraded fourth-generation communications networks tend to use a pricier monthly plan compared to owners of third-generation smartphones and feature phones.
With the faster networks, LTE smartphone users are also likely to use their mobile phones even more by watching movies and television, playing mobile games and shopping online.
SKT has secured about 4.22 million LTE subscribers as of the end of July with the firm aiming to reach 7 million by the end of this year, its officials said.
SK Planet, its affiliate and a spin-off of the telecom, also said the number of its T-Store subscribers topped 15 million in the second quarter and that the number of T-Premium subscribers surpassed 1.15 million.
“SKT has successfully commercialized the LTE service, thus laying a solid foundation to become a leader in data service competition,” said SKT’s chief executive Ha Sung-min. “Moreover, through the spin-off of SK Planet and acquisition of Hynix Semiconductor, SK Telecom is now set to develop greater opportunities and achieve new growth.”
