Business
Part 1. Vocabulary
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fare |
/fer/
v. -
perform in a specified way in a particular situation or over a particular
period of time.
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whop |
/(h)wäp/
v - to hit
or defeat:
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aggregate |
/ˈaɡriɡət/
n. - a whole formed by
combining several (typically disparate) elements. "the council was an aggregate of three regional assemblies"
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audit |
/ˈôdət/
n. - an official
inspection of an individual's or organization's accounts, typically by an
independent body. "audits can't be expected to detect every fraud"
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gain |
/ɡān/
v. - obtain or secure
(something desired, favorable, or profitable). "the process has gained the confidence of the industry"
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Part 2. Article Reading
Foreign companies doing business in South
Korea fared well amid the pandemic last year, with electric carmaker
Tesla reporting a whopping 300 percent increase in sales, a report
showed Sunday.
According to data compiled and released by CEO Score, a local market
researcher, the aggregate sales of the top 50 foreign-owned companies in
Korea reached 21.8 trillion won ($18.76 billion) in 2020, up 15 percent from
the previous year. Operating profits rose 42.2 percent to 1.2 trillion won.
The data is based on regular audit reports filed by the companies with
local authorities.
The foreign firms’ gains are in contrast with a 0.2 percent drop in sales by
the top 500 Korean companies last year. The Korean 500 saw their operating
profit advance, but only by 5.4 percent from the previous year -- far below the
gain of over 40 percent posted by the foreign top 50.
Among foreign companies, Tesla Korea stood out with big jumps in both revenue
and operating profit. The US electric carmaker’s local unit logged 71.6 billion
won in sales, up 295.9 percent from 2019. Its operating profit came in at 10.8
billion, marking a 429.9 percent increase from a year earlier.
Netflix Services Korea followed, reporting a 123.5 percent increase in sales
and a 295.3 percent gain in operating profit. Its revenue was 415 billion won,
while operating profit came in at 8.8 billion won.
Other strong performers include French luxury goods brand Louis Vuitton Korea,
British consumer electronics maker Dyson Korea and Chinese computer
manufacturer Lenovo Korea.
Despite the gains, the foreign firms’ commitments to local investment or giving
didn’t change much, the CEO Score report pointed out. Their investment
spending, as a percentage of total revenue, shed 0.3 percentage points to 2.8
percent in 2020, while the ratio of donations remained the same at 0.04 percent
of total sales.
From news reports (khnews@heraldcorp.com)