LG Display swings to a loss as inflation puts brakes on pandemic-led demand

SEOUL, July 27 (Reuters) - South Korea's LG Display Co Ltd swung on Wednesday to a loss in the second quarter from a profit a year earlier, as inflation and rate hikes hurt demand for panels used in TVs and IT gadgets after several quarters of pandemic-fuelled sales.

The operating loss at the Apple Inc supplier was 488 billion won ($371.49 million) for the April-June quarter, compared with a profit of 701 billion won in the same period last year.

This is the first time LG Display logged a quarterly operating loss since the second quarter of 2020. The loss was against an average forecast of a 343 billion won loss from 12 analysts polled by Refinitiv SmartEstimate. ($1 = 1,313.6400 won) (Reporting by Joyce Lee, Heekyong Yang and Byungwook Kim; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)