KT&G Q3 net jumps 29 pct on currency gains

SEOUL, Nov. 4 (Yonhap) -- KT&G Corp., South Korea's dominant tobacco company, said Thursday its third-quarter net profit jumped 29 percent from a year earlier on foreign-exchange-tied gains.

Net profit for the three months ended in September rose to 359.2 billion won (US$300 million) from a profit of 277.7 billion won in the year-ago period, the company said in a statement.

"The won's weakness against the dollar drove up the value of the company's dollar-denominated assets and helped the quarterly bottomline," the statement said.

The U.S. dollar rose to 1,184.90 won at the end of September, compared with 1,173.50 won a year earlier, according to data from the Bank of Korea.

But operating profit fell 2.3 percent to 423.9 billion won from 434 billion won over the cited period.

The company said decreased overseas sales amid the extended COVID-19 pandemic cut into the operating profit.

Sales climbed 7.2 percent to 1.568 trillion won from 1.463 trillion won.

From January to September, net income rose 1.6 percent to 878.2 billion won from 864.3 billion won during the same period last year.

Korea Ginseng Corp. (KGC), a wholly owned unit of the tobacco firm, saw its third-quarter sales fall 1.1 percent on-year to 417.6 billion won, with its operating income down 16 percent to 68.6 billion won.

Currently, KT&G has four tobacco manufacturing plants, one each in South Korea, Russia, Turkey and Indonesia, whose combined capacity reached 13.6 billion cigarettes a year.

kyongae.choi@yna.co.kr
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