POSCO International Corp., the trading arm of South Korean steel giant POSCO Holdings Co., said Friday it posted record profit in 2022, buoyed by solid sales in commodities trading and energy sectors.
Operating income reached 1.17 trillion won (US$949.8 million) in the January-December period, up 48.8 percent from a year earlier, the company said in a release. Annual sales stood at 41.7 trillion won, up 16.1 percent from the previous year.
Net profit came to 805 billion won, up 44.3 percent from 356.5 billion won a year earlier.
Friday’s figures included the combined earnings of POSCO Energy Co., a POSCO affiliate merged with POSCO International last year.
Excluding POSCO Energy, POSCO International’s operating profit rose 54.2 percent on-year to 902.5 billion won, with sales increasing 12 percent to 38.98 trillion won.
The energy unit generated 640 billion won in profit and 5.3 trillion won in sales, accounting for more than half of its revenue sources. Notably, it generated 370 billion won in operating profit from overseas gas fields in Myanmar and Australia.
The power plant business posted 270 billion won in sales.
The trading unit booked 530 billion won in operating income and 36.4 trillion won in sales, accounting for the bulk of its annual revenue.
POSCO International said it plans to spend 3.8 trillion won over the next three years to develop into a general trading and energy company encompassing the entire energy and commodities value chain, primarily the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector.
It plans to carry out mining exploration projects in Malaysia and Indonesia, and increase the output in the upstream area.
The company will also work to expand its LNG terminal in Gwangyang, a southwestern industrial city in South Korea, and bolster the LNG bunkering and storage businesses.
It will spend $200 million to increase palm oil production in Indonesia to up to 500,000 tons a year by 2025.
In the fourth quarter of last year, excluding the earnings from POSCO Energy, it posted 168.8 billion won in operating profit, up 20.6 percent from the previous year, with sales reaching 7.9 trillion won, down 13.3 percent from a year earlier.
Shares in POSCO International slid 0.21 percent to 23,950 won on the main Seoul bourse on Friday, underperforming the broader KOSPI’s 0.62 percent gain. The earnings results were released before the stock markets closed.
Source: Yonhap News Agency