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SEOUL, April 24 (Yonhap) -- KT Corp., South Korea's largest fixed-line telephone and Internet company, said Friday that its first-quarter profit fell 9.4 percent from a year earlier due to lower demand.

Net income amounted to 139.6 billion won (US$104.5 million) in the January-March
period, compared with 154.1 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a
regulatory filing. It posted a loss of 26.6 billion won in the last quarter of
2008.
Sales slipped 6.5 percent on-year to 2.77 trillion won, while operating profit
gained 15.4 percent to 384.5 billion won, it said.
KT shares were trading at 36,750 won on the Seoul bourse as of 9:50 a.m., up 1.8
percent from the previous session.
The company said that its bottom line was hit by a shrinking customer base in the
fixed-line business.
A former state-run company, KT controls more than 90 percent of South Korea's
wired telephone market and services nearly 45 percent of broadband Internet
users.
In late March, it announced a merger with its mobile affiliate KTF Co., the
country's second-largest mobile carrier, in an effort to boost its
competitiveness in the saturated local telecom market.
The merged entity is scheduled to launch on June 1.
ygkim@yna.co.kr
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