Sun&L swings to profit in Q2 on restructured portfolio

Sun&L swung to a profit in the second quarter after restructuring its business portfolio around lifestyle product packaging.

The company said Monday in a preliminary earnings disclosure that second-quarter sales on a separate financial statement basis reached 27.7 billion won ($19.3 million), up 3.7 percent quarter-on-quarter. Operating profit came in at 900 million won, turning positive from both the previous quarter and the same period a year earlier.

Preliminary net profit for the period reached 10.8 billion won, also swinging to a profit. Net profit for the first half of this year totaled 6.9 billion won. Sun&L said the gains reflected disposal income from the completed sale of some assets, including forestland in Pohang.

The turnaround was driven primarily by the company's lifestyle beauty division, which posted cumulative first-half sales of 30 billion won and operating profit of 1.6 billion won. Sun&L attributed the results to a successful shift in its portfolio away from its legacy business structure toward beauty and lifestyle product packaging.

"The exit from past businesses — including the liquidation of our New Zealand subsidiary SLNZ — combined with a focused strategy on beauty packaging as a new core business, is now showing up in our earnings as a structural improvement," a company official said. "In the second half, we will continue to strengthen our competitiveness in the beauty and lifestyle product packaging market to achieve both top-line growth and improved profitability."

The second-quarter operating results are based on separate financial statements prepared under Korean International Financial Reporting Standards and may be subject to revision following an external auditor's review.