SK Innovation will absorb its separator business subsidiary SK IE Technology (SKIET) through a merger. The decision to bring SKIET back into the fold comes more than seven years after the physical division that spun it off, positioning the company to secure financial stability and improve operational efficiency amid the prolonged EV chasm and price competition from Chinese manufacturers.<\/p>\n
SK Innovation and SKIET each held board meetings on the 25th and approved the merger proposal between the two companies. The merger will proceed with SK Innovation absorbing SKIET, issuing new merger shares to be distributed to SKIET shareholders. A small-scale merger procedure applies to the surviving company, SK Innovation, while a standard merger procedure applies to the dissolving company, SKIET.<\/p>\n
The merger ratio has been set at 1 to 0.1174540. This figure was calculated based on reference market prices derived from the arithmetic average of each company’s one-month and one-week volume-weighted average closing prices and the most recent closing price, in accordance with the Capital Markets Act and related regulations. Accordingly, SKIET common shareholders will receive 0.11 shares of SK Innovation common stock per share held.<\/p>\n
The two companies plan to obtain approval for the merger at SK Innovation’s board meeting and SKIET’s shareholders’ meeting on November 24, then complete the process with January 1 next year as the merger date. New SK Innovation shares resulting from the merger will be listed on January 18 next year. As the merger proceeds through a small-scale merger procedure, the appraisal rights exercise process is omitted, and shareholder meeting approval is replaced by board resolution.<\/p>\n
SKIET was launched in April 2019 through a physical division of SK Innovation’s materials business and listed on the KOSPI market in May 2021. Based on its production capabilities for lithium-ion battery separators (LiBS), a core material for EV lithium-ion batteries, the company has expanded its global presence in the secondary battery separator market with production bases in South Korea, China, and Poland.<\/p>\n
However, the business environment has changed dramatically since the spin-off, with slowing growth in the global EV market, delayed demand recovery in key markets including North America, and intensifying price competition as Chinese competitors enter the global market. SKIET posted operating losses of 291 billion won (approximately $210.3 million) in 2024 and 246.3 billion won (approximately $178.0 million) in 2025, marking two consecutive years of losses, with losses exceeding 200 billion won (approximately $144.5 million) expected again this year. The company faced limitations in improving profitability and cash generation in the short term, with constrained capacity for independent fundraising.<\/p>\n
SK Innovation determined that merging with the parent company would be more advantageous than maintaining SKIET as an independent entity, resolving business and financial risks while enhancing business competitiveness. SK Innovation had reportedly been pursuing a partial sale of its SKIET stake as part of portfolio rebalancing, but those efforts had not materialized.<\/p>\n
Following the merger, SKIET is likely to be reorganized as a separator business division within SK Innovation or as a company-in-company (CIC). SK Innovation plans to improve operational efficiency in the separator business, reduce redundant and financial costs, and combine its R&D capabilities with SKIET’s product development capabilities to strengthen competitiveness, including expanding the energy storage system (ESS) separator business.<\/p>\n
An SK Innovation official said, “Through this merger, we plan to strengthen financial stability and streamline the business structure, and thereby enhance the mid- to long-term competitiveness of the separator business. We will do our utmost to ensure this merger leads to business competitiveness recovery and enhanced shareholder value.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, SK Innovation has been accelerating portfolio rebalancing efforts, including last year’s merger of its EV battery subsidiary SK On with lubricants and immersion cooling subsidiary SK Enmove. This absorption of SKIET is interpreted as an extension of that business restructuring. The company has set a strategy to leap forward as a competitive total energy company in the future electrification era by 2030, centered on core businesses including oil and chemicals, LNG and power, batteries, and energy solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SK Innovation will absorb its separator business subsidiary SK IE Technology (SKIET) through a merger. The decision to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[43472,335,67168,20012,241,6260,240,67167,1363,4302],"class_list":["post-131699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sk","tag-energy-storage-system-ess","tag-kospi","tag-lithium-ion-battery-separator-libs","tag-poland","tag-sk","tag-sk-enmove","tag-sk-group","tag-sk-ie-technology-skiet","tag-sk-innovation","tag-sk-on"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}