2017 was a pretty great year for Samsung, even though the world’s number one smartphone vendor, chipmaker and TV manufacturer lost an important battle towards the end in a pivotal mobile market. But while you were looking elsewhere, another chaebol managed to break some records with minimal fanfare.

Of course, LG’s all-time high annual revenue of KRW 61.4 trillion (USD 55.4 billion) is nothing compared to what Samsung will probably report for the entire last year after posting overall earnings of KRW 62.05 trillion in the July – September quarter alone.

Still, we must give credit where credit is due, and LG Electronics pulled off a full-year 2017 revenue score that was 10.9 percent higher than the 2016 result, with KRW 2.47 trillion (USD 2.23 billion) profits representing the greatest such tally since 2009.

“Strong performance by premium home appliances and TVs” largely led to the 85 percent year-on-year increase in profits, while Q4 2017 revenues surged 15 percent from the final three months of 2016, to KRW 16.96 trillion (USD 15.3 billion), generating “strong” KRW 366.8 billion (USD 330.9 million) operating profits for the past quarter.

As always, the Korean company’s mobile division was the weakest performer… by far between October and December 2017, although “strong sales of the LG V30 and other premium smartphones and an improved business structure” helped the department survive a “challenging marketplace and strong competition from Chinese brands.”

LG Mobile lost a bit of money during Q4, but it was actually able to “narrow” previous deficits on the back of growing KRW 3.07 trillion (USD 2.77 billion) revenues. All in all, 213.2 billion won were wasted, equating to a little over 192 million US dollars, which is definitely an improvement over a KRW 375.3 billion (USD 331.37 million) loss during Q3 2017. Unfortunately, there’s no G7 in sight to raise hopes of the company’s smartphone division actually making a little moolah in the immediate future.