SEOUL, KOREA- SK Telecom announced on October 29 that it recorded an operating profit of 551.4 billion won for the third quarter of this year, up 88.4 percent from a year ago. Sales grew by 1.0 percent to 4,124 billion won, while net profit jumped by 186 percent to 502.2 billion won.

SK Telecom explained that its third quarter sales grew by 0.2 percent compared to a quarter ago, thanks to an increase in ARPU (average revenue per user), plus a steady growth of its new business, including B2B solutions.

SK Telecom’s third-quarter ARPU reached 34,909 won, up 2.6 percent from a quarter ago. The number of LTE subscribers for SK Telecom reached about 12.27 million as of the end of September 2013, accounting for more than 45 percent in its total subscribers.

Operating profit rose by 1.1 percent compared to a quarter ago. Net profit also grew by 7.4 percent quarter on quarter primarily thanks to its investment in SK Hynix which achieved record-high performance in the third quarter.