SK Telecom profit jumps 16 percent as company targets AI

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SK Telecom profit jumps 16 percent as company targets AI

Published: 06 Aug. 2024, 13:35

LEE JAE-LIM
lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr

SK Telecom's T-Tower in Jung District, central Seoul [YONHAP]

SK Telecom's second quarter operating profit rose 16 percent on year, Korea's largest mobile carrier said Tuesday.

Operating profit for the April-June period reached 537.5 billion won ($392 million), exceeding the market consensus of 518 billion won compiled by market tracker FnGuide. Sales rose 2.7 percent on year to 4.42 trillion won, slightly below the market expectation of 4.44 trillion won.

Net profit for the period inched up 0.7 percent to 350.2 billion won, missing the market forecast of 364 billion won.

The carrier's mainstay mobile business continued to deliver strong performance with the proportion of fifth-generation communications network subscriptions surpassing 70 percent.

The number of roaming service subscribers also increased 37 percent on year to 1.23 million in the second quarter.

Sales from the enterprise unit climbed 11 percent on year to 434.2 billion won, and sales from data centers jumped 20.5 percent to 59.5 billion won.

Revenue from the cloud business advanced 28 percent to 39.6 billion won.

SK Telecom said it will work to further strengthen its competitiveness in the artificial intelligence (AI) business, including AI data centers and AI services, in the second half.

Since announcing its vision to become a “global AI company” last year, SK Telecom has made a series of investments in AI-related firms.

The company invested $20 million in Lambda, a GPU cloud provider in the United States, $10 million in AI search engine Perplexity and $200 million in enterprise technology company Smart Global Holdings this year.

BY LEE JAE-LIM,YONHAP [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]