LG Uplus Inc., South Korea's smallest mobile carrier, said Thursday its net profit more than tripled in the second quarter, driven by strong sales in wireless business and reduced marketing costs.

Net income came to 115.9 billion won ($99.8 million) in the April-June period, up 245.3 percent from 33.6 billion won the previous year, the company said in a regulatory filing.

The bottom line beat the median estimate of 89.5 billion won in a poll by Yonhap Infomax, the financial news arm of Yonhap News Agency.

LG Uplus booked 192.4 billion won in operating profit, growing by nearly twofold from 98 billion won last year. Sales reached 2.66 trillion won, down 4.1 percent from a year ago.

The stronger bottom line is attributable to a firm gain in profit from its wireless service sector, the company said. LG Uplus, whose mobile service is heavily based on the faster long-term evolution network, logged a 4.3 percent on-year increase to 1.33 trillion won in sales from the wireless division.

The number of LTE subscribers stood at 9.1 million at the end of June, up 3.5 percent from three months earlier, it said. LG Uplus' LTE users account for 78.6 percent of the entire LTE subscribers nationwide.

The new legal limit on mobile carriers' handset subsidies to their retail outlets helped it save marketing costs. In October, the government revised the law to curb cutthroat competition between telecom firms by paying excessive incentives to retail stores to steal more customers away from rivals.

LG Uplus' second-quarter marketing expenses shrank 5.6 percent to 475.7 billion won.

Sales from Internet TV, Internet phone, high-speed Internet access and data services, rose 4.3 percent on-year to 816 billion won in the same period.

 LG Uplus said it will strive to come up with more diverse services like video content and the Internet-of-Things, using its strength in LTE network coverage.

"In the second half, we expect to post a solid growth in the home IoT sector through our smart platforms for households," the company said. 

It has been tapping into the platform business as part of an effort to find new profit sources. It has released a mobile payment tool, dubbed Paynow, to expand its footing into e-commerce.

Shares of LG Uplus traded up 1.89 percent to 10,800 won on the main bourse at 12:05 p.m. on Thursday. The earnings were released after the market opened. (Yonhap)