The author is an analyst of KB Securities. He can be reached at cygun101@kbfg.com. -- Ed. Maintain BUY, raise target price to KRW120,000; still industry top pick We maintain BUY and raise our TP by 6.2% to KRW120,000 on Kiwoom Securities given the following:(1) 4Q22 results confirmed a stable earnin
The author is an analyst of KB Securities. He can be reached at jk.lim@kbfg.com. -- Ed. Overview: Focus on profit-taking for now; buy after rate reversal endsWith KTB yields across all maturities just below the base rate, low interest rates are burdensome given that investors are expecting rate cuts
The authors are analysts of NH Investment & Securities. They can be reached at jaemin.ahn@nhqv.com and hzl.lee@nhqv.com, respectively. -- Ed. - On Feb 7, Kakao announced its purchase of 1.23mn newly-issued shares (issuance price of W91,000 per share; total value of W111.9bn) and 1.14mn convertible b
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at hwdoh@nhqv.com. -- Ed. The use of GPUs and HBM for machine learning, which has grabbed the spotlight as of late, is on the rise. Hanmi Semiconductor is a manufacturer of indispensable bonding equipment for the application o
The author is an analyst of KB Securities. She can be reached at leesunhwa@kbfg.com. -- Ed. SM Entertainment to issue new shares, convertible bonds to Kakao ᅳ SM Entertainment recently decided to issue 1.23mn shares worth KRW111.9bn (KRW91,000/ share) to be allotted to Kakao. The payment date is sch
Foreign investors net-sold 3.22 trillion won of won-denominated bonds in January this year, which is the first net selling in the market since January 2019. Their bond holdings in the market totaled approximately 222 trillion won at the end of last month, decreasing more than 6.5 trillion won in one
The Financial Supervisory Service and HI Investment & Securities announced on Jan. 28 that foreign investors’ bond holdings in the South Korean market totaled 223 trillion won on Jan. 25 whereas the amount was over 228 trillion won at the end of 2022. The amount of decrease is the largest since Dece
Woori Bank recently decided to issue US$600 million of five-year foreign currency bonds. During the demand forecasting, orders totaled US$8.1 billion, more than 13 times the planned issuance. Earlier this year, the Export-Import Bank of Korea, POSCO and SK Hynix successfully issued US$3.5 billion, U
The Korea Securities Depository (KSD) announced on Jan. 18 that South Korean investors’ foreign securities kept at the depository totaled US$76.69 billion at the end of 2022, down 23.8 percent from a year ago.The total includes US$53.37 billion of stocks and US$21.32 billion of bonds. These decrease
Woori Bank has successfully issued senior bonds adding up to US$600 million. The coupon rate of the five-year ESG bonds is 4.875 percent.According to the bank, the orders totaled US$8.1 billion, the largest among foreign currency-denominated bonds issued by South Korean financial institutions since
DL E&C announced on Jan. 18 that he has decided to make a strategic investment in X-Energy, a U.S. company developing small modular reactor (SMR) technology.DL E&C will invest US$2 million to take over the convertible bonds issued by X-Energy. Doosan Enerbility, a domestic nuclear power equipment co
The Korea Financial Investment Association announced on Jan. 18 that the 91-day CD rate fell four basis points to 3.7 percent that day, the lowest since Oct. 17 last year. Likewise, the 91-day CP rate fell three basis points to 4.8 percent, the lowest since Nov. 2. In short, the short-term money mar
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. She can be reached at yd.yoon@nhqv.com. -- Ed. Despite being a mid-sized brokerage, Daishin Securities attracted investors’ attention over the past few years, thanks to its: 1) large-scale real estate-related gains; and 2) high DY. However, ami
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. She can be reached at yd.yoon@nhqv.com. -- Ed. We expect Mirae to report consensus-beating 4Q22 earnings, considering: 1) the reflection of one-off factors and gains from asset revaluations; and 2) a likely modest level of PF-related provisioni
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. She can be reached at yd.yoon@nhqv.com. -- Ed. Active real estate-related sales operations at KIH’s affiliates in the past will likely now serve to dampen their earnings. We expect them to book additional provisioning, considering the economic
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. She can be reached at yd.yoon@nhqv.com. -- Ed. Despite recent aggressive IB expansion, the retail revenue (brokerage, WM) portion remains high at Samsung Securities, and among major brokerages, its investment asset exposure is the second lowest
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. She can be reached at yd.yoon@nhqv.com. -- Ed. We find Kiwoom’s shares appealing, pointing out its low exposure to real estate PFs, and further noting the relatively stable earnings provided by its brokerage-focused business structure. Expectin
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. She can be reached at yd.yoon@nhqv.com. -- Ed. For 4Q22, y-y and q-q earnings drops seem inevitable due to provisioning allocation following asset revaluation and the reflection of valuation losses. Although we positively view securities firms’
The Bank of Korea announced on Jan. 12 that foreign investors in the South Korean bond market showed a net decrease in investment of US$2.73 billion in December 2022, the first net outflow in three months.In 2022 as a whole, the net increase in investment in the market was US$11.72 billion. It fell
SK Hynix has successfully issued U.S. dollar-denominated bonds worth US$2.5 billion, including the memory semiconductor industry's first sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs) worth US$1 billion.The company conducted demand forecasting on Jan. 10 regarding the bond issuance. Orders totaled US$15.4 b