![\"Korea](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1779166035_83_news-p.v1.20260510.0e6ae82403d44d52967a7b907b4b540f_P1.jpg\"\/ "\\"KOSPI")
Korea Exchange<\/p>\nKorea Exchange<\/p>\n
First-quarter earnings at Korea’s listed companies improved on both the main and secondary boards, but the quality of profits and financial strength diverged sharply between the two markets. KOSPI-listed firms saw operating profit nearly triple on the back of a semiconductor boom led by Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and SK hynix (000660.KS), while KOSDAQ-listed firms posted strong net profit growth but had more than 40% of their members in the red and a higher debt ratio, exposing a gap between top-line growth and underlying strength.<\/p>\n
According to the Korea Exchange (KRX) on Tuesday, the 639 December-fiscal-year companies on the main KOSPI market posted consolidated first-quarter revenue of 927.5409 trillion won, up 19.49% from a year earlier. Operating profit climbed 175.83% to 156.3194 trillion won, and net profit rose 177.82% to 141.4436 trillion won. Profit growth far outpaced revenue growth. The operating margin improved by 9.55 percentage points to 16.85% from 7.30%.<\/p>\n
Large-cap chipmakers were at the center of the earnings improvement. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix posted combined consolidated first-quarter revenue of 186.45 trillion won, accounting for 20.10% of the total. The two companies generated operating profit of 94.84 trillion won and net profit of 87.57 trillion won, meaning more than 60% of the entire market’s operating profit came from the two firms.<\/p>\n
Even excluding the two, however, KOSPI revenue rose 9.07% to 741.0912 trillion won. Operating profit increased 44.49% to 61.4764 trillion won, and net profit grew 55.79% to 53.8724 trillion won. The operating margin of companies excluding the chipmakers also rose to 8.30% from 6.26%. While semiconductors lifted both the index and the upper end of earnings, profit improvement spread to other sectors as well.<\/p>\n
By sector, electrical and electronics stood out. On the KOSPI, the sector’s consolidated revenue rose 81.38%, operating profit jumped 927.56%, and net profit climbed 457.07%. IT services revenue increased 41.41%, while the metals sector posted a 58.92% gain in operating profit. The financial sector also saw consolidated operating profit rise 30.51% and net profit rise 28.82%, led by the securities industry, where operating profit and net profit surged 141.19% and 139.33%, respectively.<\/p>\n
The KOSDAQ market also posted strong profit growth. The 1,273 December-fiscal-year companies on the KOSDAQ recorded consolidated first-quarter revenue of 84.9461 trillion won, up 21.72% from a year earlier. Operating profit rose 78.17% to 4.1284 trillion won, and net profit jumped 171.22% to 4.4342 trillion won. The operating margin improved to 4.86% from 3.32%. The absolute size of profits and profitability, however, lagged the KOSPI by a wide margin.<\/p>\n
Within the KOSDAQ, the gap between blue-chip firms and the rest was wide. The 131 companies in the KOSDAQ150 index posted consolidated revenue of 25.2467 trillion won, up 44.79%. Operating profit rose 53.23% to 1.9223 trillion won, and net profit grew 64.77% to 1.7587 trillion won. The operating margin of KOSDAQ150 companies stood at 7.61%, more than double the 3.70% recorded by non-index firms. Companies in the KOSDAQ Global Segment also posted an operating margin of 9.96%, 5.65 percentage points higher than non-segment firms.<\/p>\n
The issue is the market’s underlying strength. Only 752 KOSDAQ companies, or 59.07% of the total, posted a consolidated profit, while 521, or 40.93%, were in the red. The debt ratio rose 9.23 percentage points to 122.03% at the end of the first quarter from 112.80% at the end of last year. By contrast, 504 KOSPI companies, or 78.87%, were profitable, while 135, or 21.13%, posted losses.<\/p>\n
“The KOSPI has seen its profit base step up a level, driven by semiconductors, while the KOSDAQ, except for some blue-chip stocks, still has a large number of loss-making firms and heavy financial burdens, showing a clear gap in earnings improvement,” an official in the financial investment industry said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Korea Exchange First-quarter earnings at Korea’s listed companies improved on both the main and secondary boards, but the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[337,15297,15299,15296,613,276,15298,241,275],"class_list":["post-21902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sk-hynix","tag-korea-exchange","tag-kosdaq-earnings","tag-kosdaq150","tag-kospi-q1-earnings","tag-operating-profit","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-semiconductor-boom","tag-sk","tag-sk-hynix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21902","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=21902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}