LG Uplus’ bottom-line was hit by rising expenses during Q3, with its mobile business leading revenue growth on increases in subscribers and handset sales.

On its earnings call, CFO Lee Hyeok-Joo highlighted record-high in-house and MVNO subscriber growth. Total users grew 15.3 per cent year-on-year to 18.3 million, with 5G customers up 19.7 per cent to 6.8 million and MVNO 53.1 per cent to 5.5 million.

Net profit fell 8.3 per cent to KRW156.7 billion ($119.8 million), due mainly to a 10 per cent increase in staff and advertising expenses, and a 26 per cent rise in amortisation costs.

Consolidated service sales rose 2.3 per cent to KRW2.9 trillion, with wireless increasing 3.1 per cent to KRW1.5 trillion.

Handset revenue grew 2.2 per cent KRW675.9 billion.

ARPU fell 6.4 per cent to KRW28,311.

IoT connections grew 67.1 per cent to 7.1 million.

The IPTV and broadband businesses increased 2.8 per cent to KRW607.2 billion and telephony declined 5.8 per cent to KRW89.9 billion.

Enterprise infrastructure sales grew 7.9 per cent to KRW404 billion.

Capex for the first nine months of the year rose 6.3 per cent to KRW1.7 trillion.