LG has just announced the company’s Q4 2016 and full year financial results for 2016. The company has announced a 2016 operating profit of 1.34 trillion won ($1.16 billion), which is a 12.2-percent increase from 2015, in case you’re keeping track at home. The company’s home appliances, air solutions and home entertainment divisions performed really well and are the main reasons LG had managed to increase their profits compared to 2015. The company reported revenues of 55.37 trillion won ($47.92 billion) for 2016, and a net income of 126.3 billion won ($109.31 million).
Now, the company also reported a 258.80 billion won ($223.98 million) net loss for the fourth quarter of last year, mainly due to the company’s mobile division. LG reported revenues of 14,78 trillion won ($12.79 billion) for the fourth quarter of last year, which is 11.7-percent higher compared to Q3 2016 and 1.5-percent higher compared to the same period last year. Do keep in mind that LG reported a 348.9 billion won ($299.4 million) profit back in Q4 2015, so this is definitely a step back for the company. Now, it is also worth mentioning that these results are in line with the guideline which surfaced earlier this month, and this is LG’s first quarterly loss in 6 years. Poor performance by LG Mobile can be attributed to the LG G5 which did not sell that well, the company’s flagship was supposed to be the force that will drive LG Mobile throughout 2016, but that did not happen, and the company will definitely look to change things around with the LG G6 which is due to land on February 26th during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 in Barcelona.
Now, to give you some more perspective as to how LG Mobile failed to impress, let’s just say that that part of the company pulled in 2,90 trillion won ($2.51 billion) in revenue in the fourth quarter last year, which is a 15-percent increase compared to Q3 2016, but also a 23-percent drop compared to the same period last year, and that is quite disappointing. LG even acknowledged that the LG G5 is to blame here by saying the following: “Profitability was hampered by weak sales of the G5 smartphone and higher marketing investments”. The company’s (semi-)modular approach to the LG G5 did not pay off, and the LG G6 will be considerably different. LG did not announce how many smartphones they managed to sell in 2016, which is quite interesting.