SK Telecom posts 20% drop in Q2 net profit

South Korea's top mobile operator, SK Telecom, reported a 20 percent drop in second-quarter net profit Thursday, due mainly to a one-off cost related to personnel restructuring. Net profit in the April-June period stood at 397.9 billion won ($342.8 million), compared with 497.63 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing. SK Telecom attributed the size of the decline to special severance payments to workers leaving the company as part of a voluntary redundancy programme. Operating profit fell 24.4 percent on-year to 412.9 billion won in the second quarter, while sales slumped 1.15 percent to 4.25 trillion won. SK Telecom has some 28.4 million users -- about half of the South's vibrant mobile service market. Some 62.6 percent of its clients use its long-term evolution (LTE) 4G service. Competition is fierce in the saturated wireless market, which has some 41.2 million smartphone users in a population of 51 million.