KT Corp., South Korea’s second-largest mobile carrier, said Friday its net profit sank 45.7 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, mainly dented by restructuring costs.

The company, however, turned around from three consecutive quarters of net losses, paving the way for future upturns.

Net profit came to 73.9 billion won ($70 million) in the July-September period, compared with 136.2 billion won the previous year, the company said in a regulatory filing.

The result marks a turnaround from the second quarter, when it reported 757.2 billion won in net loss.

It posted a net loss of 542.5 billion won in the last quarter of 2013, before narrowing it down to 40.9 billion won for the first quarter of 2014.

Operating profit reached 335.1 billion won, up 8.9 percent from a year ago, with sales climbing 3.9 percent to 5.95 trillion won over the cited period.

The third-quarter bottom line falls far short of the median market estimate of 124.6 billion won polled by Yonhap Infomax, the financial news arm of Yonhap News Agency. (Yonhap)