LG Powercom Sales Top W1 Tril.
By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
LG Powercom said Sunday its sales surpassed 1 trillion won for the first time in its eight-year history thanks to growing demand for broadband Internet services.
It recorded 1.01 trillion won in sales in the January-November period, up 31 percent from a year earlier. It sees no problem attaining its full-year sales target of 1.1 trillion won.
Powercom is the third largest broadband Internet provider in Korea with an 11-percent market share after KT and Hanaro Telecom. With the telecom industry facing a shakeup next year with a series of M&A deals, LG Powercom is also preparing for a merger with its parent company LG Dacom, a telephone and network service provider, as early as next year.
``Surpassing the one-trillion-won mark means that we have secured an equal foothold with competitors, as the communications and broadcasting sectors are going to converge in the future,'' the firm said in the release.
Korea's broadband Internet market has been almost saturated but LG Powercom has been the only exception. In October, the firm had a net subscriber increase of 36,455, while KT, the largest player, lost 2,058 and Hanaro, the second largest, added only 1,162.
Powercom's steady, robust growth stands out in the whole telecommunications industry.
When it was founded in 2000 by KEPCO, the state-managed power monopoly, as a cable maintenance firm, its annual sales were only 256 billion won. It grew to 492 billion won when LG Dacom purchased a controlling 45.4 percent stake for 819 billion won in 2002. The sales continued to swell, especially after it started the broadband Internet business in 2005.
Its annual growth rate was 34.1 percent last year, while most other telephone, mobile and Internet firms' growth rate remained in single digits.
LG Powercom's next mission is to list its shares on the market in 2008 and merge with Dacom, according to analysts. KEPCO still holds 43.1 percent of the firm and it wants to sell the stake. And the merger with Dacom is deemed as an inevitable choice to survive in the broadband Internet market as its competitors KT is moving to integrate with KTF and Hanaro Telecom with SK Telecom.
LG Powercom reported an operating profit of 38.4 billion won on sales of 812.7 billion won last year.