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| Samsung Electronics' headquarters in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province / Courtesy of Samsung Electronics |
Korea's major listed firms saw their sales jump more than 16 percent to an all-time high in 2021 despite the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, a corporate tracker said Thursday.
The combined top line of the country's leading 1,000 companies by sales stood at 1,734 trillion won ($1.35 trillion) last year, up 16.4 percent from a year earlier, according to the Korea CXO Institute.
This marked the first time that those firms' total sales have surpassed the 1,700 trillion-won level.
Makers of electronic products, chips, petrochemicals and steel fared well last year, while hotels and other travel-related companies suffered setbacks in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, the institute said.
Of the 1,000 corporations, 801 enjoyed sales increases, with global tech titan Samsung Electronics posting the largest sales and retaining the No. 1 spot for the 20th straight year.
Samsung's sales came to 199.75 trillion won, up 33.4 trillion won from a year earlier and marking the biggest year-on-year increase among those companies.
Samsung's sales accounted for 11.5 percent of the total, up from 11.2 percent in 2020.
Steel behemoth POSCO Holdings, formerly POSCO, came next with a year-on-year sales gain of 13.4 trillion won, followed by POSCO International, the trading arm of POSCO Holdings, with 11.3 trillion won and chip giant SK hynix with slightly over 11 trillion won.
A total of 229 companies had sales of 1 trillion won or more, setting a new record.
Leading container shipper HMM saw its sales shoot up 120 percent year-on-year to 13.7 trillion won, joining the club of firms with a top line of 10 trillion won or more, the institute said. (Yonhap)
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