Hyundai Motor Co., Korea's largest automaker, said Thursday that its 2011 earnings reached a record high on brisk sales in domestic and overseas markets.
Net profit reached 8.1 trillion won ($7.1 billion) last year, up 35.1 percent from 6 trillion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.
Operating profit rose 36.4 percent on-year from 2010 to 8.07 trillion won, with sales rising 16.1 percent to 77.8 trillion won, the company said.
Hyundai Motor said the strong bottom-line is attributable to robust sales of its new models and improved management efficiency.
"Hyundai Motor has continued to show steady growth thanks to brisk sales of new vehicles, which have good fuel economy and popular designs based on solid quality management," said the carmaker in a statement.
Its global sales rose 12.4 percent from a year earlier to 4,059,438 units in 2011, surpassing the 4 million level for the first time. The carmaker exported 1,202,405 vehicles to overseas markets last year and produced 2,174,805 vehicles at its overseas plants, said the company.
For the fourth quarter of last year, Hyundai Motor posted a 38 percent on-year hike in its net profit to reach 2 trillion won. Its sales rose 10.7 percent on-year to 20.5 trillion won during the September-December period, with 1,109,533 vehicles sold. Its operating profit soared 71.9 percent on-year to 2.1 trillion won.
Hyundai Motor said it will continue to focus on quality management and developing environment-friendly technologies this year amid the lingering eurozone debt crisis and a global economic recession.
The company said it will seek to strengthen its presence in the world automobile market by aggressive marketing and production increase. The third plant in China and an assembly line in Brazil will begin mass production later this year, it added.
The carmaker said in a conference that it seeks to sell around 4.29 million vehicles this year, up 5.7 percent from a year earlier.
Hyundai Motor said that Europe's debt crisis can be an opportunity for the company to expand its market share in the region. It is targeting sales of 465,000 vehicles in Europe in 2012, up 15.4 percent from the previous year.
It also has a plan to see a 4.5 percent increase in its sales in the U.S. market with four new models set to be unveiled in the country this year.
In China, it expects its sales to rise 6.8 percent to 790,000 cars with the release of two new models.
Shares of Hyundai Motor closed 2.14 percent down at 229,000 won on the Seoul bourse on Thursday. (Yonhap)