LG Cards Earnings Rise 87.4%

LG Card Co., South Korea's top credit card company, said Thursday its first-half earnings jumped 87.4 percent annually due to a refund of corporate taxes.

Net profit came to 1.2 trillion won ($1.3 billion) in the January-June period, compared with 640.6 billion won a year ago, LG Card, an affiliate of Shinhan Financial Group, said in a

regulatory filing.

Sales rose 0.5 percent on-year to 1.4 trillion won and operating profit gained 8.6 percent to 697.2 billion won, it added.

In the second quarter, the company posted a net profit of 335.3 billion won, up 16.8 percent from a year earlier.

Shares of LG Card fell 1.58 percent to close at 49,700 won on the Seoul bourse. The results were released after the market closed.

LG Card said its delinquency ratio stood at 4.53 percent as of the end of June, down from 5.1 percent three months earlier.

The company said the number of its cardholders reached 10.76 million as of the end of June.

In March, Shinhan Financial Group, the nation's No. 2 financial services company, bought a 78.6 percent stake in LG Card for 6.7 trillion won from creditors that bailed out the card company in 2003.