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By News Reporter
Delivering the First Commercial Implementation of HCA Specification 1.0,
Company Expands Smart Home Ecosystem Through Partnerships With Other Brands
SEOUL, Aug. 29, 2023 — LG Electronics (LG) is set to present the first commercial implementation of the Home Connectivity Alliance’s HCA Specification 1.0, enabling cross-brand appliance connectivity through the LG ThinQ smart home platform. By the end of this year, consumers will be able to control appliances from diverse brands, such as Samsung and Vestel, with the intuitive-to-use ThinQ app, providing seamless interconnectivity and a smarter, more convenient home.
With a firm commitment to customer experience innovation, LG has joined with other brands to bring the elegant simplicity of cross-brand compatibility to major markets worldwide, including South Korea, the United States and Europe. The partnership will initially cover major appliance product categories, such as washing machines, dryers and dishwashers, and will gradually be expanded to other types of appliances in the future.
The widespread adoption of HCA Specification 1.0 to development makes it possible to monitor and control various brands’ home appliances and air solutions using a single application. With the ThinQ app, users just have to register their compatible products, and then they’re ready to enjoy the ease and time-saving freedom of one-stop device management. Those with an LG washing machine and a Samsung dishwasher in the home, for example, will no longer have to switch between each manufacturer’s app to set their preferred wash cycle and cleaning settings.
The arrival of true cross-brand interconnectivity is the realization of the HCA’s vision for a seamlessly unified smart home experience. Founded in January 2022 and comprising a number of smart home solutions manufacturers, the HCA aims to provide cloud-based interoperability between the smart home platforms of its member companies. As a board member of the alliance, LG has been working closely with other appliance makers, including Samsung and Vestel, to drive the adoption of HCA Specification 1.0, with the ultimate goal of enhancing user convenience.
Committed to expanding the smart home ecosystem, LG has also actively supported the work of the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), a global organization dedicated to developing open communication protocols for smart home devices. LG contributed to the development and standardization of the Matter protocol, an Internet Protocol-based home IoT communications standard led by the CSA.
“LG ThinQ enables a seamlessly interconnected home appliance ecosystem that will provide new smart home experiences to customers around the globe,” said Jung Ki-hyun, executive vice president and head of platform business center. “LG will continue to expand compatibility between ThinQ and other HCA members’ smart home platforms.”
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By News Reporter
Earlier this year, LG introduced its new brand direction and visual identity under the
link hidden, please login to view to put the spotlight on the value of Life’s Good with a more youthful and dynamic image.
‘Life’s Good’ truck at the ‘Life’s Good’ event held in South Korea
To give employees a deeper understanding of what Life’s Good is all about, the company recently unleashed its on its business sites across South Korea. For its next phase, LG is extending these efforts to customers worldwide by kicking off the campaign’s world tour this month.
The first city to enjoy the charm of this campaign was Milan, Italy. To commemorate the start of the global campaign, LG CEO William Cho visited the vibrant, historic city in person to join local LG staff in affirming the message of Life’s Good through two major activities: a flashmob and the Life’s Good tram.
While in Italy, CEO Cho took part in the company’s flashmob at Piazza Gino Valle, where 100 employees held panels up in the air to form a 10×10 square that spelled out Life’s Good. This performance was put on to spread the power of collective efforts and trust in one another while championing the importance of adopting a joyous, can-do attitude to learn and grow together.
Once the 100-strong team is ready to part ways with these panels, instead of being thrown away, they will be used to decorate LG’s Milan offices for daily motivation. And to ensure the campaign’s message lives on, a tram decorated with Life’s Good photos and messages will operate in Central Milan for about a month.
The first Life’s Good campaign aims to help people savor every moment of life through LG’s products and services. And with many more campaigns to come in other parts of the globe, each one will highlight LG’s positive Life’s Good message in its own unique way.
So stay tuned to be the first to learn how this colorful campaign is striking a chord with people around the world.
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By News Reporter
About 500 Participants Come Together for Preliminary Rounds
Ahead of Finals in Abu Dhabi
SEOUL, July 31, 2023 — LG Electronics (LG) hosted the two-day online preliminary round of the 2023 Global IT Challenge for Youth with Disabilities (GITC) with the Ministry of Health and Welfare of South Korea and Rehabilitation International Korea on July 25.
LG Corporation, in conjunction with South Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare, has been leading the GITC since 2011. The program was established to strengthen the ICT capabilities of young people with disabilities while establishing a strong foundation that promotes their social inclusion. Run by LG Electronics and the GITC Organizing Committee, the competition has attracted a total of around 4,500 youth with disabilities from 38 countries who have benefited from the program so far.
This year, about 500 youth with disabilities selected through local preliminary rounds across 17 countries have competed in 6 competitions to earn their place in the finals, which will be held in Abu Dhabi, UAE, in October 2023. Certificates and prize money will be awarded to outstanding performers in each event and disability category.
The competitions not only evaluate their skills in various computer programs, including Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel and internet search engines, but also test their ability to make and edit videos, use programs for self-driving car programing, and develop IT that improves the lives of persons with disabilities. Teams of 4 or fewer could participate in each contest, with this year’s GITC extra special as it is debuting an esports competition with no restrictions in participation by the type or degree of disability.
Participating countries are continuously being added. From this year, countries outside of South Korea, China, Vietnam, Thailand and other Asian countries can compete, as the GITC expands to countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
More and more of the youth with disabilities from the GITC are going on to thrive in society. For example, Chan Outdam Keo and Paramuditaya Dyan, the winners of the Global IT Leader (MVP) award at the 2014 Busan GITC and 2015 Indonesia GITC, respectively, are now making a name for themselves as IT developers in top government agencies.
“The experience I gained from this competition has been invaluable to my development as it completely changed my mindset,” said Keo. “I was able to change my way of thinking and foster my dream of improving the field related to my disability.”
The company is continuing its efforts to realize a Better Life for All by ensuring its products and services are accessible to everyone, regardless of their physical ability. This includes operating a sign language counseling center, providing product manuals with video, sign language, voice support and distributing braille stickers for home appliances. Additionally, the company has been running a disabled advisory group since last year and continues to listen to customers’ greatest inconveniences and address them.
“The Global IT Challenge is all about building a foundation that allows people with disabilities to integrate better into society, with former participants proving that they can have a successful career in the IT field,” said Yoon Dae-sik, senior vice president of External Relations at LG Electronics. “As a global company, we will always strive to support youth with disabilities so that they can pursue their passions and live out their dreams.”
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By News Reporter
Record Revenues, Strong Profitability Provide Solid Foundation for
Pursuing Mid- to Long-term Growth Through Advancement of Business Portfolio
SEOUL, July 27, 2023 — LG Electronics Inc. (LG) today announced second-quarter 2023 consolidated revenue of KRW 20 trillion with operating profit of KRW 741.9 billion.
The company recorded the highest second-quarter revenues in company history. The second-quarter results underscore the success of the company’s strategy to drive continuous growth while strengthening its business competitiveness. The record revenue reflects the company’s actions to fundamentally improve its business structure by pursuing new platform-based service businesses and continuously expanding the business-to-business (B2B) segments. Profitability also was strong, although operating income was 6.3 percent lower than the second quarter last year, primarily due to a one-time second-quarter 2023 provision.
The company plans to drive further profitability improvements by optimizing efficiencies and by preemptively meeting market demands through enhanced demand forecasting and manufacturing competitiveness. LG also plans to continuously strengthen its online brand store and direct-to-consumer businesses.
The LG Home Appliance & Air Solution Company generated second-quarter revenues of KRW 7.99 trillion and an operating profit of KRW 600.1 billion. Despite intensified market conditions, the business unit recorded strong profitability on the back of increased sales of high-demand products such as air conditioners and energy efficient heat pump-enabled products. The operating profit increased by 40 percent from the previous year, reflecting efficient cost structure management. The company will leverage its high-efficiency innovations including heat pumps and ESS as demand for green technologies grows in Europe, North America and around the world. At the same time, the company sees the electrification trend as an opportunity for future growth in the HVAC business. In the third quarter, the company will launch new LG ThinQ UP 2.0 home appliances featuring hyper-personalization, subscriptions and services. Certain mass-tier appliance lineups also will be expanded in response to market changes. The company plans to lead a paradigm shift in the home appliance industry by combining service-based business models with differentiated product competitiveness, while continuing efforts to increase efficiencies in production, purchasing and logistics for stable profitability.
The LG Home Entertainment Company recorded second-quarter revenue of KRW 3.15 trillion and an operating profit of KRW 123.6 billion. As challenging business conditions persist for the worldwide consumer electronics industry, the company continued to focus on improving operational efficiency and improving profitability by growing the content and service businesses based on LG’s webOS smart TV platform. The company intends to transform its TV business portfolio into a “media and entertainment service provider” by expanding content, services and advertising in differentiated products. The business unit also intends to solidify LG’s leadership in the ultra-large-screen TV market with the launch of the 97-inch LG SIGNATURE OLED M, the world’s first “wireless” consumer TV with Zero Connect technology. Also driving the premium TV market are expanded sales of the company’s popular new Lifestyle Screens.
The LG Vehicle component Solutions Company‘s second-quarter revenue was KRW 2.66 trillion, the highest second-quarter revenues in company history. However, an operating profit was KRW 89.8 billion excluding non-recurring expenses such as one-off provision, achieving the highest second-quarter operating profit in terms of business performance. But after the company’s operating profit margin included the one-time provision of KRW 151 billion, related to General Motors’ recall of the Chevy Bolt EV, it resulted an operating loss of KRW 61.2 billion. This provision reflects the increases in material costs that occurred during the recall period.
The business unit will continue its growth momentum by focusing on expanding its high value-added and high-performance business. The company’s order backlog is expected to reach KRW 100 trillion by the end of the year, leading to sequential sales conversion resulting in profitable growth. In particular, in terms of profitability, it is positive that the company is experiencing economies of scale from sales expansion. As steady increase of electric vehicle demand is expected in the future, the company will actively seek new opportunities in future mobility areas, such as autonomous driving, software solutions and content, while securing stable profitability by expanding the portion of high value-added and high-performance products supplied to key automotive customers around the world.
The LG Business Solutions Company saw improved second-quarter revenues of KRW 1.33 trillion with an operating profit of KRW 2.6 billion. Both revenue and operating profit declined slightly from the same period last year due to the persistent softening of demand for IT products. From the third quarter, demand for IT products is expected to show a gradual recovery compared to the first half. In the midst of this, LG plans to actively expand sales of monitors and laptops equipped with gaming features and OLED displays. In the commercial display business, the company will seek opportunities for further growth with customized solutions for various vertical markets, from hospitality and health care to education, retail and corporate.
Earnings Conference and Conference Call
LG Electronics will hold a Korean / English conference call on July 27, 2023, at 16:00 Korea Standard Time (07:00 GMT/UTC). Conference call participants are instructed to pre-register online to receive a private PIN. To participate in the conference call, dial +82 31 810 3130, enter passcode 6418# and then the PIN. The corresponding presentation file will be available for download at the LG Electronics website before the call.
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By News Reporter
Company Pursues New Growth Engines,
Enhancing Customer Experience at Every Contact Point
LG will innovate with a platform-based service business model that continuously generates profits, such as content and services, subscriptions and solutions, to the hardware-oriented businesses, which generate sales and profits at the time of purchase. This is part of the company’s attempt to create a business model centered on customer engagement, combining services with hundreds of millions of LG devices used by customers around the world.
To start, as of the end of this year, LG’s TV business is projected to make a great transformation based on its webOS operating system, which powers more than 200 million smart TVs around the world. In line with this, the company intends to transform its TV business portfolio into a “media and entertainment service provider” by expanding content, services and advertisement in products, including LG OLED and LG QNED TVs, which have differentiated competitiveness.
The company will invest more than KRW 1 trillion over five years to strengthen the content competitiveness and drive growth of LG Channels – an advertising-based free broadcast platform. LG Channels increased from 20 million users in 25 countries last year to 48 million users in 29 countries this year. To achieve quantitative growth, LG will expand customer contact points by increasing the supply of the webOS platform to external TV brands and expand the application of webOS to other product groups.
Household appliances are also speeding up the transformation of service-based portfolios. The goal is to further evolve LG ThinQ UP appliances that upgrade functions customers need even after purchase and evolve into a “Home as a Service” platform that combines hyper-personalization, subscriptions and smart home services. LG ThinQ will support the emerging home solutions business that encompasses the entire house by adding services that customers need in the home complementing connected devices.
The home appliance rental and care service business is also expanding to include all services necessary for spaces in the house, including product maintenance, management and cleaning. The compound annual growth rate of LG’s rental and care service sales has exceeded 30 percent over the past five years.
Accelerating the expansion of its B2B businesses, the company aims to evolve its electric vehicle (EV) business into a top electric component part provider worth more than KRW 20 trillion by more than doubling sales by 2030. Responding to trends, such as vehicle electrification and connected services, LG is actively seeking new opportunities in future mobility areas, such as autonomous driving, software solutions and content. The order backlog of LG’s Vehicle component Solutions Company is expected to reach KRW 100 trillion by the end of the year, showing the competitiveness of the business.
By 2030, LG aims to double sales for its heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) business and become a global top-tier comprehensive air conditioning company. The company also plans to discover organic strategies, such as completing mergers and acquisitions and making equity investments. The company is establishing a localized business structure that covers research and development, production, sales and maintenance of air conditioning projects in major regions such as North America and Europe. Also, LG will preemptively prepare for the future in energy service sectors, such as energy storage systems, home energy management systems and virtual power plants.
In the case of built-in home appliances, the company will expand markets in North America and Europe, which account for more than 70 percent of the global market and foster LG to become one of the top five built-in appliance brands. Commercial displays provide customized solutions for each specific customer group and secure growth momentum.
Over the past two years, considering market conditions and evolving business model strategies, the company boldly exited its mobile phone and solar panel businesses and, instead, focused resources on future high-growth areas. In the future, LG plans to accelerate future development by selecting and concentrating on new businesses that are expected to have similarly high growth potential.
The company is also continuing its strategic investment in digital healthcare, a key focus of the North American Innovation Center known as LG NOVA based in Silicon Valley, California. The scale of investment in LG NOVA is also on the rise. Among other LG NOVA-led initiatives, LG is providing remote medical treatment solutions in North America through the partnership with Amwell, a U.S. telemedicine company. In the future, the company will consider expanding its services through strategy investment to preventative and follow-up management.
LG’s EV charging business has an aim to provide an integrated solution that encompasses the control area, not just the sales of chargers. The company recently launched four products in South Korea through its affiliate company HiEV Charger and will expand markets to Europe and Asia next year. LG also plans to start building additional production bases within the year to target the North American market.
The company is also establishing a wide range of strategic collaborations in the metaverse. Mixed Reality devices are continuously being developed jointly with leading global platform companies, while the development of Augmented Reality devices is underway at the Korean Ministry of Science and ICT’s project to advance the development of AR Glass Advancement and the building of content production ecosystem. Various efforts are also being made to provide a more immersive experience on large screens, such as TVs.
Breaking Business Limitations via Full Potential Strategy
LG has been operating a company-wide task force to preemptively respond to changes in the business environment. The task force aims to not only reduce short-term costs but also promote fundamental changes in business structure and methods to maximize business potential, securing suitable profit levels and promoting sustainable growth despite prolonged economic uncertainty.
These efforts have contributed greatly to LG’s performance as well. The company’s sales and operating profit in the second quarter of 2023 were the highest ever for the second quarter. In the first half of 2023, the company recorded the second highest sales ever and the third highest operating profit. These tangible results were achieved by improving the fundamentals of the business despite the prolonged slump in global demand.
LG believes that, in order to innovate the customer experience (CX), a company needs to advance digital transformation (DX) as it is essential to have a data-based understanding of customers to reflect hidden needs – which customers may not be aware of – in products and services. In this regard, the company is making efforts to combine CX and DX to make a business model to better communicate with customers by establishing various points of contact, provide a never-before-seen CX, build organizational capabilities to research and plan differentiated CX and innovate experiences throughout the customer experience journey.
To expand customer contact points, LG will strengthen direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales through LGE.com, the company’s online brand shop, and increase operation of pop-up stores to interact with the younger generation, including Gen Z. The number of visitors of pop-up stores throughout Korea since last year adds up to 600,000.
To plan and develop new products, the company actively utilized systems internally to understand customers based on data and discover hidden needs. This includes “Lifegraphy,” a customer data analysis system, and “IC 360 (Intellytics Customer 360),” a company-wide platform that integrates and manages customer data collected from all customer contact points.
In addition, in terms of organizational capabilities, LG is defining and applying its core customer experiences to products and services through customer behavior research led by the CX Center. The company is actively making changes in customer-centric working methods, with employees voluntarily participating in campaigns to define ‘customers’ and ‘customer value.’
Spreading Change Across Organizational Culture and Brand to Business Strategy
Internally, REINVENT LG, an organizational culture innovation campaign, was put in place to change the way of working and communicating at LG. By doing this, the company hopes to reinvent the brand by having employees lead changes themselves.
Transformations have also been made to bring a dynamic and youthful look to the brand at customer contact points. Changes that redefine the brand’s core values – Uncompromising Customer Experience, Human-Centered Innovation and Warmth to Power a Smile – and add dynamism to LG’s visual identity are actively being made around the world.
Supporting the ESG vision of a Better Life for All, the company has made six core commitments: achieving carbon neutrality, circular economies, eco-conscious products, sustainable supply chains, an inclusive organizational culture, and accessible products and services.
In particular, LG plans to actively expand various activities that customers can engage in, enabling them to better relate to the company’s ESG vision and understand its meaning and significance. With ESG management not only focused on suppliers, LG’s vision also takes ESG to a new level to instill a sense of pride in consumers that they positively contributed to the environment by selecting LG’s products and services, providing an experience of increased convenience and usability.
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