By Kim Yoo-chul
Staff Reporter
LG Display, the world's No. 2 LCD panel supplier after Samsung Electronics, said Tuesday its net profit for the July-September period was 295 billion won, down from 524 billion year-on-year.
Operating profit fell 63 percent to reach 254 billion won from 693 billion won. Sales slightly declined 2.3 percent to 3.86 trillion won from 3.95 trillion won a year earlier. The result is based on a consolidated guideline, which includes its overseas performances.
"The result is better than expected mainly due to months long production cuts," its spokesman Lee Sang-wook said.
The company invested 920 billion in the latest quarter. But its cash-equivalent assets maintained 3.8 trillion won, while the net debt declined to 400 billion won, washing off worries over its financial soundness.
"We will cut production costs by a high single-digit percentage in the fourth quarter after cutting costs 7 percent in the previous quarter," Lee said.
The overall outlook for global LCD makers is highly uncertain as the global economic turndown is directly hitting the appetite for consumers to purchase TVs or to buy new PCs.