Hyundai Motor Profits Soar 71% to Record

Hyundai Motor Co.‘s second-quarter net profit soared 71 percent to a record high as both sales revenue and volume rose.

Hyundai, South Korea’s biggest automaker, earned 1.39 trillion won ($1.2 billion) in the three months ended June 30, the company said in a regulatory filing. It earned 811.9 billion won the same period last year.

The second-quarter result exceeded the company’s previous all-time high net profit of 1.13 trillion won set in the first quarter of this year.

The Seoul-based maker of the Elantra and Sonata sedans and the luxury Genesis said sales during rose 18.3 percent to 9.56 trillion won from 8.08 trillion won a year earlier.

The company also released figures showing that global sales volume in the second quarter rose 19.2 percent to 922,225 vehicles from 773,809 the year before.

Hyundai Motor and affiliate Kia Motors Corp. form the world’s fifth-largest automotive group.

Both Hyundai and Kia have expanded aggressively overseas. Hyundai has factories in China, India, Turkey, the U.S. and the Czech Republic. Kia has plants in China and Slovakia and began production in the United States last year.

Kia is scheduled to announce first-quarter earnings on Friday.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)