Broker forecasts see Korean carriers' Q3 profit up 83% to 1.37 trillion won

Combined third-quarter operating profit for South Korea's three mobile carriers is forecast at 1.3671 trillion won, up 82.7% from 748.3 billion won a year earlier, according to broker estimates compiled by financial information provider F&Guide and reported by digitaltoday.co.kr.

Combined revenue for SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus is projected at 15.3283 trillion won for the quarter, about 1.4% higher than a year earlier.

SK Telecom's operating profit is forecast at about 531.9 billion won, up roughly 998% year on year. KT is seen at about 534.7 billion won, down about 0.7%, while LG Uplus is forecast at about 300.5 billion won, up about 85.8%. SK Telecom is scheduled to report its results on November 4.

AI data centers behind the numbers

The carriers' AI data center businesses are growing. SK Telecom's AIDC revenue reached 136.2 billion won in the second quarter of this year, up 92.5% year on year, while LG Uplus's AIDC revenue rose 28.9%. LG Uplus is building a large-scale AIDC in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, and KT recently launched Token Factory, a service for using and managing costs across multiple AI models.

The comparison base is low. In the third quarter of last year, SK Telecom's operating profit was 484 billion won, weighed down by costs from a SIM information leak incident, against 5333 billion won in the third quarter of 2024, before the hacking incident. LG Uplus's operating profit fell 34.3% year on year in that quarter on one-off labor costs tied to voluntary retirement, and KT's results included real estate-related gains. KT has also carried costs this year from customer compensation and subscriber churn after an unauthorized small-payment incident.