Listed firms' market cap rises about 14% in Q1

The market value of listed firms in Korea swelled nearly 14 percent in the first quarter of 2023, with Samsung Electronics retaining its top-cap status, a corporate tracker said Wednesday.

The market capitalization of 2,558 companies listed on the country's main and secondary bourses came to 2,291 trillion won ($1.74 trillion) as of end-March, up 13.9 percent, or 280 trillion won, from three months earlier, according to the data from the Korea CXO Institute.

The number of companies with a market cap of 1 trillion won or more stood at 258, up 30 from the start of the year.

The tally excludes the value of preferred shares issued by those companies.

Samsung Electronics, the world's top memory chip and smartphone maker, had the largest market value of 382.1 trillion won as of end-March, up 50.7 trillion won from the end of January.

Leading car battery maker LG Energy Solution was the runner-up with a market cap of 136.7 trillion won, which was 32.3 trillion won more than three months earlier.

EcoPro, a leading Korean producer of secondary battery materials, was the top-cap firm on the tech-heavy KOSDAQ market with 12.9 trillion won, up 10.1 trillion won from end-January.

Other big gainers include chip giant SK hynix (9.4 trillion won), major battery maker Samsung SDI (9.1 trillion won) and No. 2 automaker Kia (7.9 trillion won).

In contrast, biotech titan Samsung Biologics saw its market value sink by 2.8 trillion won over the cited period, with LG Household Health Care and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries losing 1.9 trillion won and 1.6 trillion won, respectively. (Yonhap)