LG Magna Turns Profitable for First Time in Q1 2026, EV Motor Business Revenue Surges 224%
Alina Collins
LG Magna posted Q1 revenue of KRW 321.4 billion (~$210 million), up 224% year-on-year, with net profit of KRW 69 billion — triple its entire 2025 full-year earnings. The turnaround is driven not by market expansion but by rising utilization at its Mexico plant, underpinned by two critical tech bets: high-speed motors and rare-earth elimination.
Triple a full year's profit in one quarter — how?
Q1 net profit hit KRW 69 billion, three times the full-year 2025 figure. Revenue reached KRW 321.4 billion (~$210 million), up over 224% year-on-year.
This means → the swing to profit came not from selling more units into a bigger market, but from Mexico plant utilization climbing steadily — the same line running fuller, spreading fixed costs thinner.
In plain terms = the factory moved from "just built, half-idle" to "shipping at full load." Margins followed.
Faster-spinning motors — why is this the defining tech direction?
Since mass-producing drive motors for GM's Bolt EV in 2016, LG Magna has iterated through roughly 3.5 product generations. The consistent thread: raise the RPM.
This means → higher speed lets you lower torque while keeping the same power output — the motor shrinks, and material costs shrink with it.
Internal assessment puts the optimal cost zone for mass-market IPM motors — interior permanent-magnet motors — at 20,000–24,000 RPM. The company is targeting 24,000 RPM.
Pushing to 24,000 RPM — what is the biggest obstacle?
The core bottleneck is thermal management. Higher speed means more heat in the coils and magnets; if cooling can't keep up, efficiency collapses — or the motor burns out.
LG Magna's approach: route cooling oil from the outside of the stator — the motor's stationary part — into its slots, flushing the innermost coils directly. The catch: any oil leaking into the rotor-stator air gap creates drag loss (imagine spinning a wheel underwater).
To solve this, LG Magna and LG Chem co-developed a foaming epoxy insulation paper that expands when heated, sealing leak paths and guiding oil axially. In plain terms = it acts as a self-sealing valve triggered by heat. The technology is currently under patent application.
Eliminating heavy rare earths — how do you escape China's supply chain?
Today's mainstream EV motors use sintered NdFeB magnets containing heavy rare earths — dysprosium (Dy) and terbium (Tb) — to maintain magnetic stability at high temperatures. Supply is almost entirely dependent on China, and access has grown harder in recent years.
LG Magna's answer: direct oil-cooling of the rotor magnets. Internal simulations show that lowering magnet operating temperature by roughly 20°C would allow a switch to heavy-rare-earth-free magnets. This means → instead of hunting for alternative ore sources, the company aims to use cooling technology to lower the material threshold, sidestepping the rare-earth chokepoint entirely.
In plain terms = magnets need expensive heavy rare earths only because they run hot. Cool them down enough, and a cheaper formulation works.
Simpler manufacturing — where exactly are the savings?
The foaming epoxy insulation paper replaces the traditional varnish-impregnation process, which is complex, energy-intensive, and eats significant floor space.
Separately, LG Magna is rearranging its hairpin winding — a high-efficiency coil layout — to cut the number of coil types per stator from nine down to four, while also lowering end-turn height. This means → more than half the part variants are gone, making the line simpler and yield easier to control.
What supports the next leg of growth?
Three capacity lines ramping simultaneously: Mexico utilization still climbing; Asian OEM North America programs expected to start production in 2026; the Hungary plant approaching mass-production launch.
The company also signaled plans to extend electrification technology into aerospace, defense, robotics, and heavy machinery, reducing dependence on the EV market alone.
This reflects a mid-term thesis beyond "sell more motors" — LG Magna is betting it can leverage high-speed motor and cooling IP across multiple industries. Whether high-speed motors validate at scale and the rare-earth-free solution holds up in mass production are the key checkpoints for its medium-term profitability.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.