Seoul, Jul 26 (IANS): LG Display reported its fifth consecutive quarterly losses on Wednesday as sluggish demand for smartphones, TVs and computers took a toll on its bottom line.

The major panel maker reported an operating loss of 881.5 billion ($689 million) for the April-June period, compared with a loss of 488.3 billion won a year earlier, with high inflation and rate hikes significantly dampening consumers' appetite for tech gadgets.

It logged a net loss of 698.8 billion won. Revenue fell 15.5 per cent to 4.73 trillion won over the cited period, reports Yonhap news agency.

LG Display went into a deficit in the second quarter of last year, for the first time in two years, as a pandemic-driven boom in IT devices ended amid rising prices and interest rates.

Demand has been falling rapidly over the past year for LCD and premium organic light-emitting diode panels (OLED). Poor macroeconomic conditions have also caused businesses to cut orders in order to deplete their excessive inventories.

The panel maker sees inventory levels of its customers improving and demand picking up.

The company said it "witnessed reduced panel inventory levels across the industry's overall ecosystem as inventory adjustments have continued in downstream industries, particularly focusing on TV and IT products, since last year."

It also saw "increased second-quarter demand for and shipments of mid-and large-sized panels, including for OLED TVs."

It also attributed a drop in losses from the first quarter to efforts to reduce costs and higher operation efficiency. In the first three months of the year, the company reported an operating loss of 1.09 trillion won.

In the second quarter, panels for laptops and tablet PCs took up the biggest portion of LG Display's sales at 42 per cent, followed by TV panels at 24 per cent, panels for mobile devices at 23 per cent, and panels for automobiles at 11 per cent.

LG Display said it aims to make a turnaround in the second half by expanding premium OLED panels for mobile devices and TVs and automotive display business and continuing its efforts to reduce costs.

Also, it will focus on market-to-order business, which it said has "maintained stable shipments and prices based on close partnerships with customers," and hopes to expand the portion of the business to over 50 per cent next year and over 70 percent in the coming 2-3 years, from the current 40 per cent.

LG Display shed 2.63 percent to close at 13,340 won, underperforming the broader index's 1.67 loss.