South Korea’s LG Energy Solution (LGES) reported a 39% decline in its quarterly profit, citing pressures from slowing electric vehicle (EV) demand.
However, the result exceeded market expectations, as some European and North American automakers increased demand. For the July-September quarter, LGES announced an operating profit of 448 billion won ($322.84 million), meeting an earlier company forecast but down from 731 billion won in the same period last year.
The battery supplier to major automakers such as Tesla, General Motors, and Hyundai Motor credited a tax benefit from the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as helping offset the losses.
According to LGES’s regulatory filing, the company would have faced an 18 billion won operating loss without this tax credit.
Revenue for the quarter reached 6.9 trillion won, marking a 16% decline year-over-year. Despite ongoing EV market fluctuations, LGES’s earnings outperformed analyst expectations of 374 billion won, as projected by LSEG SmartEstimate, a forecast weighted toward consistently accurate analysts.
