SK Telecom’s market capitalization has breached the 22 trillion won mark (approximately $14.7 billion), overtaking the combined market value of KT and LG Uplus. This marks the first time the company has achieved this since its 2021 spin-off from SK Square, signaling a reshaping of the South Korean telecom industry’s market cap landscape.<\/p>\n
SK Telecom shares surged as high as 108,000 won (approximately $72) during intraday trading, setting a new record, before closing at 102,800 won (approximately $68), up 4.68% from the previous session. The company’s market capitalization reached 22.04 trillion won (approximately $14.8 billion). In contrast, KT edged up 0.17% to 58,900 won (approximately $39) with a market cap of 14.82 trillion won, while LG Uplus rose 2.81% to 15,750 won (approximately $10) with a market cap of 6.77 trillion won. The two rivals’ combined market cap stood at just 21.59 trillion won (approximately $14.5 billion), trailing SK Telecom by approximately 448.8 billion won (approximately $300.6 million).<\/p>\n
Two main factors are driving the stock’s strength. First, a recovery in earnings and subscriber metrics. SK Telecom faced headwinds last year from a SIM card hacking incident that triggered subscriber losses, slowing performance, and a dividend suspension. However, the company rebounded in the first quarter, posting consolidated revenue of 4.39 trillion won (approximately $2.9 billion) and operating profit of 532.3 billion won (approximately $356.5 million), reclaiming the 500 billion won quarterly operating profit threshold within a year. Operating profit surged 351.3% compared to the previous quarter. Mobile phone subscriptions also returned to net growth, adding 208,000 lines.<\/p>\n
Second, soaring expectations around AI. Market analysts suggest SK Telecom’s stock is already pricing in much of the potential upside from its investment in Anthropic, whose valuation has been rumored to reach as high as $900 billion. “SK Telecom’s share price significantly reflects Anthropic’s market-expected valuation,” said Lee Hee-jae, an analyst at Daishin Securities. “The stock will now respond to earnings performance and shareholder return outlooks.”<\/p>\n
Lee Chan-young, an analyst at Eugene Investment & Securities, noted that “an upward revision in Anthropic’s valuation or visible meaningful profit contributions from SK Telecom’s AI business could serve as grounds for raising the target price.” Eugene Investment raised SK Telecom’s target price from 85,000 won to 94,000 won (approximately $62) to reflect the higher equity value of Anthropic, but maintained a “Neutral” rating, judging that there is insufficient evidence for further revaluation until AI contributes a meaningful share of overall profits.<\/p>\n
The AI infrastructure business is also gaining momentum. SK Telecom’s first-quarter AI data center revenue jumped 89.3% year-on-year, and the company continues to expand its AI infrastructure, including the Ulsan AI data center. SK Broadband also contributed to the group’s performance, posting a record quarterly operating profit of 116.6 billion won (approximately $78.1 million), driven by high data center growth and labor cost savings from a voluntary retirement program last year.<\/p>\n
Shareholder return policies are normalizing as well. Quarterly dividends, suspended in the second half of last year, resumed with a payment of 830 won per share in the first quarter, and a reduced dividend policy will take effect from the fourth-quarter settlement. “Management’s commitment to restoring both earnings and shareholder returns to pre-hacking incident levels continues to be confirmed,” Lee added.<\/p>\n
SK Telecom shares climbed to 99,800 won (approximately $66) intraday the previous day, just 200 won shy of the 100,000 won mark, before closing at 98,200 won (approximately $65) as profit-taking emerged. Nevertheless, expectations prevail in the industry that the “100,000 won SK Telecom” era is imminent given the current momentum.<\/p>\n
SK Telecom’s market cap surpassing the combined total of its two competitors is seen as more than just a stock price rally\u2014it reflects a simultaneous recovery in the core telecom business and market enthusiasm for its new AI ventures. Brokerages forecast SK Telecom’s annual operating profit to reach 1.91 trillion won (approximately $1.3 billion) this year, projecting a return to pre-hacking incident profitability levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SK Telecom’s market capitalization has breached the 22 trillion won mark (approximately $14.7 billion), overtaking the combined market…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[544,9651,891,71871,337,16460,2095,241,2788,676,1364],"class_list":["post-141423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sk-square","tag-ai-data-center","tag-anthropic","tag-daishin-securities","tag-eugene-investment-u0026-securities","tag-korea-exchange","tag-kt","tag-lg-uplus","tag-sk","tag-sk-broadband","tag-sk-square","tag-sk-telecom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141423","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=141423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}