South Korean telecommunications firm KT said Friday that it posted an operating profit of 427 billion won ($379.6 million) in the second quarter, marking its highest quarterly performance in four years.

The company disclosed that its operating profit rose 15.8 percent on-year during the April-June period, thanks to its strong performance in its wireless network, landline telecom and media businesses.


KT’s second-quarter performance overtook that of SK Telecom, the country’s leading telecom company, for the first time since 2012. SKT’s second-quarter operating profit stood at 407.4 billion won, down 1.3 percent on-year.

KT also surpassed SKT in terms of revenue in the second quarter. KT’s revenue rose 4.5 percent on-year to 5.68 trillion won during the period compared to SKT’s revenue of 4.27 trillion won recorded during the three months.

Meanwhile, KT’s net profit during the given quarter slumped 20.7 percent on-year to 255.2 billion. The company accredited the decline to abnormally high profits generated in the second quarter of 2015, when it sold off its car rental unit KT Rental.

KT said its second-quarter earnings success was led by the generally upbeat performance across all of its businesses, with the highest contribution from its main wireless network segment.

Its wireless network business recorded a revenue of 1.88 trillion won in the second quarter, up 2.8 percent from the previous quarter, propelled by a surge in the number of subscribers to KT’s Long Term Evolution network services.

The number of new subscribers to KT’s LTE service during the second quarter came in at 13.6 million, accounting for some 74.1 percent of the firm’s entire mobile network subscribers.

Many existing KT subscribers chose to purchase secondary devices, such as Line Kids Phone and the LTE Egg Plus, during the April-June period, boosting KT’s profits, it said.

KT’s landline telecom business saw its second-quarter revenue drop 1.1 percent on-year to 1.29 trillion won, due to declining demand for landline telephone services. However, KT expects the business segment to pick up on the back of rising demand for its GiGA Internet -- an ultra high-speed Internet network boasting a download speed of 1Gbps.

“Some 1.73 million people have subscribed to our GiGa Internet service and we expect this number to easily rise to 2 million by the end of this year,” KT said.

KT’s media content segment, which offers IPTV services, recorded the highest year-on-year increase in revenue during the second quarter, at 15.1 percent, followed by its ICT infrastructure and solutions business at 12.4 percent and its finance business at 7.1 percent.

Looking ahead, the company holds high prospects for its new platform development business, including its newly launched network for the Internet of Things technology as well as specialized LTE services for corporate clients.

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)