LG Display’s quarterly earnings jump with rising TV shipments

LG Display, a Korean manufacturer of screens, said Wednesday that its first-quarter earnings jumped sharply from a year earlier.

Net profit came to 679.4 billion won ($602.3 million), hovering far above the 1.1 billion won posted a year earlier, LG Display said in a regulatory filing.

Operating profit also shot up to 1.02 trillion won in the January-March period compared to 39.5 billion won posted last year. Sales advanced 17.9 percent to 7.06 trillion won.

Net profit came in line with the estimated 675 million won suggested by the survey conducted on 16 local brokerage houses by Yonhap Infomax, the financial arm of Yonhap News Agency.

It marks 20 consecutive quarters for LG Display to post a profit. The first-quarter operating profit also marks the highest quarterly performance posted by the Korean company.

“Amid the overall increase in sales of larger panels, the record-high operating profit was made possible through profitable products such as large-sized Ultra HD TVs and other high resolution and high-end IT products,” LG Display said.

Panels for TVs accounted for 43 percent of its shipments, followed by mobile with 26 percent and laptop-tablet PCs with 16 percent. Panels for monitors accounted for 15 percent.

The company said while second-quarter shipments are expected to be similar to the previous session, the number of units shipped will decline or remain unchanged on the back of increasing demand for larger TVs. YONHAP