SEOUL, Jan. 26 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's No. 2 carmaker Kia Motors Corp. said Thursday its net profit dropped sharply from a year earlier in the fourth quarter.
Net profit came to 320 billion won (US$276.3 million) in the October-December period, down 25.7 percent from the same period a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.
Sales gained 1 percent on-year to 12.91 trillion won. Operating profit advanced 3.5 percent to 532.2 billion won.
The drop in net profit was largely attributed to a rise in costs caused by a series of labor strikes here that forced the company to increase its overseas production.
The company earlier said it had lost more than 100,000 cars in missed output due to 23 rounds of labor walkouts staged until late October.
In the fourth quarter, global sales of vehicles produced here plunged 8.8 percent on-year to 432,830 units. Sales of cars produced overseas jumped 14.3 percent to 444,359 over the cited period, it said.
For the whole year, the company's net profit came to a little over 2.75 trillion won, up 4.7 percent from about 2.63 trillion won in 2015.
Full-year sales rose 6.4 percent on-year to 52.71 trillion won, with operating profit growing 4.6 percent to 2.46 trillion won.
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