LG Dacom Hits Record High for Three Consecutive Quarters This year LG Dacom has hit a record high performance for three straight quarters. On October 25, LG Dacom (www.lgdacom.net) released its business performance in the third quarter. It has marked sales of US$311 million, operating income of US$66 million, and the net profit of US$56 million. The sales increased by 9% year on year; the operating income and the net profit respectively increased by 52% and 198% year by year. Since its foundation, LG Dacom has recorded an all-time high for three straight quarters. Entering this year, it has started to push ahead with 3 reformation tasks . attitude, cost, and quality . on a full-scale, ongoing basis. Now this reformation has settled down into stable orbits. Also mainstream businesses such as Internet, eBiz, and IDC have shown favorable trends. LG Dacom is analyzing that the above-mentioned favorable factors have brought all-time high performance to the company. Due to improved profitability of mainstream businesses, the operating margin has marked 21.2% and the Earnings Before Interests, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) margin has recorded 33.7%. Net profit also has nearly doubled compared with the previous year because of reduced interest costs that came from continued improvement in its financial structure. - SK Telecom Shows Subscriber, Revenue Increase in Q3 SK Telecom (www.sktelecom.com) released its earnings for the third quarter, with revenue of 2.7125 trillion won (US$2.9 billion), operating income of 758.1 billion won (US$801 million), and net income of 456.8 billion won (US$483 million), quarter-to-quarter growth being 2.8%, 22.4%, and 22.4% respectively. Net income fell 22.3% year-on-year, while revenue and operating income grew 4.5% and 13.0% respectively. Having reached the target of 20 million subscribers, consistent increase in subscribers have led to a rise in voice revenue, and readjustment of connection fees announced in September have led to a quarter-to-quarter revenue growth of 2.8%, and a year-on-year increase of 4.5% to a record 2.7125 trillion won (US$2.9 billion). With a drop in marketing costs, operating income was 758.1 billion won (US$801 million), a 22.4% growth from the prior quarter, and a 13.0% year-onyear rise due to an increase in revenue and readjustment of connection fees. Net income recorded 456.8 billion won (US$483 million), growing 22.4% from the prior quarter, but dropping 22.3% from the same period of last year when nonoperating income was reflected due to the sale of SK Teletech. Marketing expenses grew 13.2% yearon- year to 512.7 billion won (US$542 million), but was a drop of 14.5% from the prior quarter, taking up 18.9% of revenue. This was the result of efficient marketing expenditure with the maintenance of market leadership despite the impact from implementation of handset subsidies early this year and ongoing efforts for market stabilization. SK Telecom's CFO Hah Sung-Min remarked: "Based on the cumulative performance up until the third quarter, we will be able to achieve the revenue guidelines presented earlier this year of KRW 10.5 trillion [US$11.1 billion] without much problem. Within the changing environment, SK Telecom will maintain its market leadership to develop diverse new content, convergence services, invest in the HSDPA nationwide network, and strengthen its overseas businesses in China, Vietnam and the U.S. to achieve ongoing growth."