Kia Motors Corp., South Korea's No. 2 automaker, said Friday that its third-quarter net profit dropped 16.3 percent from a year earlier due largely to losses from equity ties with affiliates, but its operating income hit a five-year high.

Its net profit reached 550 billion won ($487 million) during the July-September period, compared with a profit of 657 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Operating income surged 19.6 percent on-year to 678 billion won over the cited period, and sales jumped 15 percent to 13.11 trillion won, it said.

The third-quarter operating income marks the highest since the second quarter of 2014, when the comparable figure was 769 billion won.

Its strong performance was backed by firm demand for its small SUVs, such as the Sportage, and the weakness of the local currency against the U.S. dollar.

In the first nine months of the year, Kia's net profit sank 14 percent on-year to 2.19 trillion won, while sales gained 3.8 percent to 36.73 trillion won over the cited period.

Its nine-month operating income declined 11.2 percent to 1.83 trillion won, it said.

Kia Motors said it sold a total of 658,374 units at home and abroad during the third quarter of the year, down 7.5 percent from a year earlier. In the first nine months of the year, the automaker sold 2.18 million units, also down 3.2 percent from a year ago.

Shares of Kia Motors finished at 53,500 won on the Seoul bourse, down 1.83 percent from the previous session's close. (Yonhap)