SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co ( HYMTF ) reported on Thursday a drop of 2.4% in first-quarter profit, beating analysts forecasts, helped by solid sales of high-margin cars, while a cheaper domestic currency boosted repatriated earnings.

The world's No.3 automaker by sales along with affiliate Kia Corp ( KIMTF ) reported net profit of 3.2 trillion won ($2.32 billion) for the January-March period, down from 3.3 trillion won a year earlier.

That compared with an average forecast of 3.0 trillion won by LSEG SmartEstimate.

Revenue rose 7.6% to 41 trillion won.

"The first-quarter sales dropped on year due to temporary shutdown of our Asan production line preparing for launch of new vehicles, but we saw solid sales growth in major markets like North America and India," Hyundai Motor ( HYMTF ) said in a statement.

Shares in Hyundai Motor ( HYMTF ) were trading down 0.8%, versus benchmark KOSPI's 1.3% fall as of 0505 GMT.

($1=1,376.4100 won)

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang and Ju-min Park; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Mrigank Dhaniwala)