Samsung Life Insurance Q1 net halves

Samsung Life Insurance Co., South Korea's top life insurer, said Friday its first-quarter earnings more than halved from a year earlier due mainly to an absence of one-off profit. Net income came to 268.4 billion won (US$248.3 million) in the April-June period, compared with 567.8 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing. The company's net profit, however, gained 15.1 percent from the previous quarter. The first-quarter bottom line was stronger than the market consensus of 259.8 billion won in a poll of analysts by Yonhap Infomax, the financial news arm of Yonhap News Agency. Revenue declined 22.4 percent on-year to 5.7 trillion won, while operating profit dropped 55.8 percent from a year ago to 321.1 billion won. The company, which closes its books on March 31, raked in a special profit of 410 billion won a year earlier from asset-backed securities.