SK Telecom's office building in Euljiro, Seoul. [SK Telecom]
SK Telecom's office building in Euljiro, Seoul. [SK Telecom]

SK Telecom's operating profit jumped 67 percent year-on-year in the second quarter.

The result reflects the company's recovery from last year's cybersecurity breach, a stabilization of its core telecom business, and robust growth in artificial intelligence data centers — its new strategic priority.

SK Telecom said Wednesday its consolidated second-quarter sales reached 4.36 trillion won ($3.05 billion), with operating profit of 566 billion won and net profit for the period of 466 billion won. Sales rose 0.5 percent from a year earlier, driven by data center business growth, while operating profit surged 67.3 percent as one-time costs tied to last year's SIM card hacking incident fell away.

On a standalone basis, the company posted sales of 3.12 trillion won, operating profit of 427.7 billion won and net profit for the period of 310.6 billion won.

The telecom business showed a recovery through expanded customer value and improved profitability, while the AI business — centered on AI data centers — gained momentum and posted sharp growth.

SK Telecom's AI business has now entered full stride. The company attributed the performance to the spread of generative AI across industries and a surge in demand for high-performance computing infrastructure, particularly from global technology giants. AI data center revenue in the second quarter reached 136.2 billion won, up 92.5 percent from a year earlier.

SK Telecom plans to accelerate AI infrastructure supply to meet demand. To that end, it established SK Hyper last month as a dedicated subsidiary for AI data center development.

SK Hyper will move to secure key resources — including sites and power supply — ahead of demand and pursue global customers. The company's near-term goal is to bring 5 GW of AI data center capacity online in phases by 2029, positioning SK Telecom to capture a leading share of the AI data center market.

On the telecom side, SK Telecom has continued to add net mobile handset subscribers despite the fallout from last year's SIM card hacking incident.

The company plans to sustain quality growth centered on customer lifetime value — a key metric measuring the total value generated over the course of a customer's relationship with a service — through efforts to reach new customer segments and launch differentiated campaigns.

As part of that effort, SK Telecom overhauled its rate structure in July with the launch of an integrated 5G and LTE plan, and is working to improve the customer experience and service accessibility.

"In the first half of this year, we laid a solid foundation for stable telecom earnings while rapidly expanding our AI data center business," said Park Jong-seok, SK Telecom's chief financial officer. "We will do our utmost to ensure SK Telecom plays a leading role in establishing South Korea as Asia's AI infrastructure hub."


ko@heraldcorp.com