SKT's consolidated operating profit for the second quarter of this year increased 16.0% year-on-year to KRW 537.5 billion.

SKT announced in a conference call held on the 6th that it recorded sales of KRW 4.4224 trillion, operating profit of KRW 537.5 billion, and net profit of KRW 350.2 billion in the second quarter of 2024 on a consolidated basis. This is an increase of 2.7% and 16.0%, respectively, compared to the same period last year. On a separate basis, sales were KRW 3.1915 trillion, operating profit and net profit were KRW 450.4 billion and KRW 280.3 billion, respectively.

Since last year, SKT has invested a total of 300 million dollars to strengthen its global AI competitiveness.

SKT announced that its AI data center business, which it is pushing hard, achieved a 20.5% sales growth year-on-year. This is due to the increased data center utilization rate and the surge in data demand due to AI. In addition, SKT won its first contract for an AI cloud business from a domestic internet service company in the second quarter. Thanks to this, its enterprise business sales grew by about 11% year-on-year to record KRW 434.2 billion.

SKT is not stopping there and is seeking to evolve into an AI data center (AI DC) business. To this end, it invested $200 million in Smart Global Holdings (SGH), an American AI data center integrated solution company. SGH is the AI cluster operator of 'Voltage Park', which has 24,000 meta GPUs. SKT and SGH are also joining hands to develop data center management systems, immersion cooling solutions, and telco edge AI solutions.

SKT is also cruising along with the development of Telco LLM with the Telco AI Alliance with Deutsche Telekom, e&, Singtel, and Softbank. Since the final contract for the establishment of the joint corporation in June, the Korean Telco LLM has been developed and applied. The number of subscribers to AI personal assistant service Adot was 4.55 million as of the end of June, an increase of 1.35 million from about 3.2 million at the end of last year. SKT invested $100 million in Perplexity in the United States to install an AI search engine in Adot.

Meanwhile, in the mobile business, the number of 5G subscribers reached 16.23 million as of the end of June. The proportion of 5G customers exceeded 70%. SKT said, “In the wired and wireless market that has reached the maturity stage, we will achieve valuable revenue by increasing customer satisfaction rather than simply offering expensive rate plans to core corporate customers.” We also plan to improve OPEX/CAPEX costs based on AI technology. The IoT business increased sales by 29% compared to the same period last year.

The dividend for the second quarter was set at 830 won per share, the same as the first quarter.

SKT CFO Kim Yang-seop said, “We will solidify our wired and wireless business performance and improve profitability and efficiency, while also demonstrating our performance as an AI company in the second half of the year,” adding, “We will maximize corporate value and shareholder value through the optimal balance between growth investment, financial structure improvement, and shareholder return.”