By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

LG Display, the world's second-largest maker of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels, reported a record quarterly profit driven by strong demand and rising prices for television and computer screens.

The company reported a third-quarter operating profit of 904 billion won (about $780 million), up by more than four-fold from the previous quarter, and revenue of 5.97 trillion won, representing a 22-percent quarter-to-quarter increase.

The operating profit, representing more than a triple of the 254 billion won posted a year earlier, tops the company's previous record of 889 billion won set in the second quarter of last year.

Net profit stood at 559 billion won, an 85-percent improvement from the previous quarter and a 90-percent increase year-on-year.


LCD television panels accounted for 55 percent of the flat-panel maker’s revenue during the July-September period, while sales from computer and laptop monitors accounted for 22 percent and 19 percent, respectively. Panels for mobile devices accounted for 4 percent of the sales.


The company said it benefited from the strong sales of flat-panel televisions in the United States and Europe that defied the economic downturn, and also the efforts by the governments of China and Japan to encourage consumption of consumer electronics products.

LG Display put itself in an ideal position to exploit the expanding market by starting operation of its new eight-generation LCD panel line in March and additional sixth-generation lines in April.

``It is expected that the shipments in LCD panels will rise in the high single digits during the fourth quarter of 2009 and panel prices will decline gradually, so there would be a need for us to be flexible to the market changes," said James Jeong, LG Display's chief financial officer.

The LCD industry has been recovering from its dismal 2008, helped by the popularity of flat-screen televisions and surging prices for LCD panels used in televisions, computer monitors and laptop computers.

According to market researcher DisplaySearch, the price of LCD panels rose across all devices in September, with the prices for 14.1-inch and 15.6-inch LCD laptop panels went up 9 percent from a month earlier.

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr