(Yicai) May 29 -- A media report saying executives from Hisense and LG Electronics have discussed the possibility of the Chinese white goods maker buying LG’s television business is unfounded, a person close to Hisense said.

The person said that business exchanges between companies are normal, and that anything beyond that is speculation.

South Korea's Electronic Business News reported yesterday that LG executives recently visited Beijing and met with senior Hisense officials, saying they coordinated plans for business restructuring, including discussion of a possible sale of LG’s TV business unit.

The global TV industry is in a period of rapid change and brand reshuffling. At the end of this March, China’s TCL Electronics said it would take over Sony’s home entertainment hardware businesses, including TVs and audio products. Qingdao-based Hisense completed its acquisition of Toshiba’s TV business in 2018.

The likelihood of Hisense buying LG’s TV business is low because it is very large and heavily focused on premium products, according to Zhang Bing, a consumer electronics analyst at Omdia. LG ranked fourth globally for TV shipments last year, behind Samsung Electronics, TCL Technology Group, and Hisense, but ranked second for revenue, behind only Samsung, Zhang said.

Referring to the reported meeting of executives, Zhang said it was possible that the two sides were discussing resource sharing and cooperation in the TV supply chain with Chinese brand manufacturers.

LG’s TV business, which sits under its Media & Entertainment Solutions division, reported a loss for last year, and sister company LG Display has already quit making liquid-crystal-display panels for TVs.

“TV is an industry where upstream supply-chain capability plays a core, even decisive, role,” Dong Min, secretary-general of the China Video Industry Association, told Yicai, adding that China is the world’s supply center for both LCD TV panels and set manufacturing.

China’s leading display manufacturers will have about a 70 percent share of the global LCD TV panel market this year, according to data from market research firm Sigmaintell.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev