S. Korean large firms' combined operating profit drops 1.7 pc in H1 2025

Seoul, Aug 17 (IANS) Major South Korean companies, excluding chip giant SK hynix Inc., saw their operating profit decline 1.7 percent in the first half of the year from a year earlier amid lingering economic uncertainties, industry data showed on Sunday.

According to the data from corporate tracker CEO Score, 342 of the country's top 500 companies by sales that released their half-yearly reports posted a combined 1,655.3 trillion won in sales for the January-June period, up 5.5 percent from a year earlier.

Their aggregated operating profit rose 5.9 percent on-year to 118.5 trillion won, reports Yonhap news agency.

However, when excluding SK hynix, which reported the largest operating profit of 16.7 trillion won for the period, their combined operating income fell 1.7 percent from a year earlier.

SK hynix's operating profit nearly doubled from 8.4 trillion won a year ago, driven by rising demand for high bandwidth memory (HBM) amid a boom for artificial intelligence (AI) computing.

Tech giant Samsung Electronics placed second with an operating profit of 11.4 trillion won for the first half, down 33.4 percent from a year earlier.

Hyundai Motor Co. logged 7.2 trillion won in operating profit, followed by Korea Electric Power Corp. with 5.9 trillion won and Kia Corp. with 5.8 trillion won.

In contrast, battery maker Samsung SDI Co. saw its operating loss reach 831.9 billion won, while SK Energy Co. and Lotte Chemical Corp. reported operating deficits of 591.6 billion won and 377.1 billion won, respectively.

Meanwhile, SK hynix said its second-quarter operating profit surpassed 9 trillion won ($6.53 billion) for the first time, driven by booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, including high bandwidth memory (HBM).

In a regulatory filing, the company reported an operating profit of a record 9.21 trillion won for the April-June period, up 68.5 percent from a year ago, setting a new quarterly record.

Revenue jumped 35.4 percent on-year to 22.23 trillion won, while net income soared 69.8 percent to 6.99 trillion won.

Both operating profit and sales exceeded the previous all-time highs set in the fourth quarter of last year.

—IANS

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