KT's net profit suffers amid higer marketing expenses and increased costs

South Korea’s KT Corp has revealed a more than 40% plunge in net profit in the second quarter of 2012 amid higher marketing expenses and increased costs associated with the rollout of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) network.

For the three months ended 30 June 2012 the company posted a net income of KRW238 million (USD209 million), down 41.6% from the KRW420.6 million it recorded in the same period a year earlier.

At 30 June 2012 KT’s wireless subscriber base totalled 17.389 million, up from 16.776 million at the same date in 2011, with the company confirming that, having launched LTE at the start of the year, by mid-2012 it had signed up 1.170 million 4G subscribers, up from 351,000 at the end of March 2012.