(LEAD) Hankook Tire net falls 12 pct in 2020 on FX losses

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SEOUL, Feb. 5 (Yonhap) -- Hankook Tire & Technology Co., the world's seventh-biggest tiremaker by sales, said Friday its net profit fell 12 percent in 2020 from a year earlier on foreign exchange losses.

For the whole of 2020, net profit fell to 379.2 billion won (US$337 million) from 429.6 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a statement.

"The won's weakness against the dollar drove up the company's dollar-denominated debts and weighed on the annual bottom line," a company spokesman said over the phone.

The dollar rose to an average of 1,180.05 won last year from the previous year's 1,165.65 won, according to data from the Bank of Korea. A weak won pushes up the value of dollar debts when translated into the local currency in financial statements.

Operating profit rose 16 percent to 628.4 billion won in 2020 from 543.9 billion won a year ago on increased sales of high-end tire products in Europe and the United States, it said.

Sales fell 6.2 percent to 6.45 trillion won from 6.88 trillion won during the same period.

Hankook Tire aims for 7.1 trillion won in sales in 2021 by focusing on sales of value-added tire products in global markets.

The company earns over 80 percent of its total revenue from abroad.

It has eight plants -- two in South Korea, one in Hungary, one in the United States, three in China and one in Indonesia -- whose combined capacity reaches 100 million tires.

kyongae.choi@yna.co.kr
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