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SEOUL, Aug. 12 (Yonhap) -- KT Corp., South Korea's major mobile carrier, said Wednesday its second-quarter net income fell 34.5 percent from a year earlier due to the effect of government fines from its massive data breach.

The company's net income for the April-June period on a consolidated basis was 480.6 billion won (US$339.9 million), according to its regulatory filing.

It posted an operating profit of 648.3 billion won for the quarter, a sharp 36.1 percent fall from last year.

Sales fell 10.1 percent to 6.68 trillion won.

KT attributed the sharp decline in net income to 54 billion won in fines from the government over a major data breach that affected more than 16,000 users.

Its operating profit also fell in the second quarter from a year earlier due to costs related to its consumer compensation program, but improved from the previous quarter amid a recovery of its business-to-business unit, the company said.

Notably, its artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud business grew by 22.3 percent from a year earlier, as more companies, especially from the financial sector, adopted its AI-related infrastructure.

"We plan to continue growth focusing on our core portfolio, while also strengthening our customer data protection and security capabilities to build customer trust and enhance corporate value," the company said in a release.

To that end, KT plans to increase sales from its AI infrastructure and solution businesses to double the amount seen in 2025 by 2028. It will also secure an additional 1 gigawatt capacity in AI data centers and 90 terabits per second capacity in submarine cables by 2031, it said.

KT also said it is in the final stages of completing a 250 billion-won stock buyback plan announced in February, with the planned deadline set for Sept. 9.

fairydust@yna.co.kr

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