By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
This is the last article in a three-part series highlighting the Korean stock market in the first quarter. ― ED.
Shinhan Financial Group, Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance and Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) suffered the biggest drops in share prices over the first three months of the year.
The Korea Exchange (KRX) said Friday that Shinhan saw its stock prices plunge 17 percent over the first quarter from 29,700 won per share to 24,600 won. Shinhan Group is the holding company of the country's No. 2 lender Shinhan Bank.
Samsung Fire, the leading non-life insurer of Asia's fourth-largest economy, came in second with a 15-percent decrease in the survey involving the 30 largest firms in terms of market capitalization.
Former state monopoly KEPCO and KTF, the runner-up wireless operator here, followed with 14 and 12 percent decreases, respectively.
Also included in the double-digit losers are Shinsegae, a big name player in the retail industry, whose prices dipped 11 percent from 482,000 to 430,050 won.
Other underachievers are Lotte Shopping (9 percent), S-Oil (8 percent), SK Telecom (8 percent), POSCO (4 percent), KT&G (4 percent), KB Financial Group (2 percent) and Hyundai Heavy Industries (2 percent).
This contrasts to Hynix Semiconductor, the world's second-largest maker of memory chips, whose stock price almost doubled from 6,700 to 12,350 won over the same period.
Hyundai Motor and LG Display also racked up 41 and 34 percent jumps apiece. LG Chem. and Hyundai Mobis also posted 27 and 26 percent increases each.
``The management of the losers may be disappointed at their first-quarter performances because the overall market is very strong,'' a Seoul analyst said.
The benchmark KOSPI, which includes all of the above companies, rose 7.27 percent over the January to March period from 1,124.47 to 1,206.26.
``It is interesting that defensive shares such as those of SK Telecom went down. That might mean that the economy is coming out of the lingering slump,'' the analyst said.
When contacted, a spokesperson at Shinhan said issuance of new shares worth 1.3 trillion won early February weighed on its stock prices.
Samsung Fire, one of the flagship units at Korea's primary chaebol Samsung Group, said its equity price headed south for no particular reason.
In the meantime, business bellwether Samsung Electronics topped the Seoul bourse in market capitalization as of the end of March with 83.67 trillion won.
Steel maker POSCO ranked second with 31.78 trillion won, followed by KEPCO with 16.33 trillion won, SK Telecom with 15.5 trillion won, Hyundai Heavy with 14.86 trillion won and LG Electronics with 13.22 trillion won.