Seoul, Feb 5 (IANS) SK Telecom, South Korea’ leading mobile carrier, said on Thursday its annual net profit plunged 73 per cent from a year earlier in 2025 due mainly to massive compensation costs following a data breach that affected its entire 25 million-user base.

The company posted net profit of 375.1 billion won ($255.6 million) last year, compared with a profit of 1.39 trillion won in 2024, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Its operating income fell 41.1 percent on-year to 1.07 trillion won, and annual sales decreased 4.7 percent to 17.09 trillion won, reports Yonhap news agency.

For the fourth quarter of 2025, SK Telecom’s net profit plummeted 75.4 percent on-year to 97 billion won.

Operating profit fell 53.1 percent to 119.1 billion won, and revenue decreased 4.1 percent to 4.32 trillion won.

SK Telecom said both its annual and quarterly earnings were weighed down by a compensation program and a decline in subscribers following a large-scale data breach.

The company reported in April that a cyberattack on its main servers may have exposed the universal subscriber identity module (USIM) data of its entire user base.

It later offered to replace the USIM chips of all 25 million users, along with a comprehensive compensation package and cybersecurity investment plan worth more than 1 trillion won, while suspending new subscription services for two months.

Last month, SK Telecom filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn a record 135 billion-won ($91 million) fine handed down by the state data protection regulator over a massive data leak last year that affected its entire 23 million user base.

SK Telecom filed the suit with the Seoul Administrative Court, just a day ahead of the deadline given to the company to seek a revocation of the decision by the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) made in August last year, according to the sources.

The PIPC had imposed the fine on SK Telecom about four months after the wireless carrier belatedly disclosed a major leak of universal subscriber identity module (USIM) data from its servers. The disclosure prompted the company to offer free USIM replacements to all of its users and an investigation by the regulator.

–IANS

na/