Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yan

SEOUL (Reuters) –South Korea’s LG Display (NYSE) Co Ltd reported Wednesday a 30% decline in its quarterly operating profit for the year. This was due to a sharp fall in panel prices, which offset strong shipments of small screens that are used in computers and laptops.

Apple Inc (NASDAQ.) Supplier posted an operating profit at 476 billion won ($397.64m) in the October-December period. This is down from 678billion a year ago.

Refinitiv SmartEstimate had calculated an analyst consensus of 588 trillion won. LG Display claimed that its results were in line with market expectations, except for a single cost associated with sharing profits with employees or executives at the end of the year.

The revenue rose 18% to 8.8 trillion won in the last year.

According to TrendForce’s WitsView market data, the prices for 55 inch liquid crystal display panels (LCDs) panels for television sets dropped 37% between October and December.

Analysts stated that LG Display avoided a larger loss in profits by focusing on television panels, which accounted for only 27%.

Analysts believe that LG will be able defend this year’s results due to its solid shipment of premium LCD panels for notebooks/monitors, whose prices have fallen less than those for LCD TV panels in 2021.

Kwon Jae-young (Vice President) and Head of Medium Small Display Marketing Division stated, “The demand for laptops, tablets, and other devices by stay-at-home users is likely to slowly fall as COVID-19 increases and distancing laws ease.”

However, the back-to-office demand and corporate demand is expected increase. Therefore, overall demand in 2022 for these devices is expected remain roughly equal to 2021.”

LG Display’s shares fell 0.7% compared to the market’s fall of 0.4%.

($1=1,197.0500 won)