Emerging from COVID-19 Nightmare
The Korea Exchange recently analyzed 593 KOSPI-listed companies with a December fiscal year-end and announced on May 20 that their sales, operating profit and net profit showed substantial improvements in the first quarter of this year with the net profit showing a year-on-year increase of no less than 361 percent.
“Their sales increased 9.1 percent year on year to 538.3459 trillion won and their operating and net profits jumped 131.7 percent and 361 percent to 44.3983 trillion won and 49.1074 trillion won, respectively,” it said. Compared to the first quarter of 2019, the profits increased 57 percent and 132 percent, respectively. In addition, the profits of the 592 companies other than Samsung Electronics, which accounts for 12.2 percent of the total sales of KOSPI-listed companies, soared 175.4 percent and 627.8 percent from a year ago, respectively.
Unlike in 2020, when they remained in the black by reducing costs with their sales falling, those companies succeeded in increasing their sales and their profits increased even more rapidly in the first quarter of this year. Specifically, the net profit-to-sales ratio rose from 2.16 percent to 9.12 percent in one year.
KOSDAQ-listed companies showed the same trend. The sales of 1,011 added up to 53.2676 trillion won in the first quarter, up 12.3 percent from a year earlier. The operating and net profits soared 98.3 percent and 238.8 percent, respectively. The net profit-to-sales ratio increased 4.5 percentage points to 6.74 percent.