{"id":82233,"date":"2026-07-11T02:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T02:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/82233\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T02:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T02:14:10","slug":"imarketkorea-gains-momentum-as-samsung-unveils-mega-chip-investment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/82233\/","title":{"rendered":"iMarketKorea Gains Momentum as Samsung Unveils Mega Chip Investment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AA view of Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek campus. Photo courtesy of Samsung Electronics website<\/p>\n

Samsung’s announcement of a 2,655 trillion won investment plan for domestic semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure to secure future growth engines is expected to benefit iMarketKorea, a maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) supplier. The business is structured so that as Samsung Electronics expands its chip fabrication plants and builds new factories, MRO procurement volumes rise in tandem.<\/p>\n

According to industry sources on the 11th, iMarketKorea (122900) posted first-quarter sales of 842.5 billion won, up 12.7% from a year earlier. Operating profit rose 71.1% to 16.6 billion won.<\/p>\n

iMarketKorea is a specialized MRO business-to-business (B2B) platform established in 2000 through joint investment by Samsung Group affiliates. Its position as a partner is firmly established, with Samsung-related MRO business accounting for more than half of total sales. MRO refers to the business of consolidated procurement of consumable materials needed for corporate operations, including industrial gloves and tools, bolts and nuts, cleaning supplies, safety equipment, packaging materials and office supplies.<\/p>\n

The strong first-quarter results are attributed to the semiconductor business of its largest customer, Samsung Electronics, entering a super cycle. The company explained that related sales are growing rapidly as demand for construction materials needed to build the Pyeongtaek P4 and P5 plants revives and semiconductor facility investment resumes.<\/p>\n

Samsung-related MRO sales in the first quarter reached 470.1 billion won, up 10.7% from the previous quarter and 17.1% from a year earlier. Operating profit in the same business rose 78.0% to 11.4 billion won, while gross profit, a measure of the profitability of the core business, increased 12.7% to 43.5 billion won.<\/p>\n

The industry views this mega project as a mid- to long-term growth engine for iMarketKorea. The outlook is that Samsung-related MRO volumes will increase in stages over several years as the Gwangju Honam cluster, the Asan back-end processing plant in South Chungcheong, and the Pyeongtaek P5 mega fab proceed simultaneously.<\/p>\n

On the 29th of last month, Samsung announced a total domestic investment plan of 2,655 trillion won, with 2,030 trillion won for semiconductor clusters in the greater Seoul area including the Pyeongtaek campus and the Yongin national industrial complex, and 625 trillion won for non-metropolitan areas such as the Honam, Chungcheong and Yeongnam regions. Of this, Honam investment totals 425 trillion won (400 trillion won for semiconductors), including a new chip fab in Gwangju and the establishment of a digital twin-based innovation hub.<\/p>\n

“iMarketKorea’s strong results are likely to continue through the second half of 2027, when the P4 and P5 construction proceeds,” said Lee Gun-jae, a researcher at IBK Investment & Securities. “Just as Korea’s semiconductor industry entering a growth cycle in 2021 had a major impact on earnings growth, this AI semiconductor cycle will also drive earnings improvement.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A view of Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek campus. Photo courtesy of Samsung Electronics website Samsung’s announcement of a 2,655…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[44050,44051,44048,5012,44049,127,36246,276,731],"class_list":["post-82233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-samsung-electronics","tag-b2b-platform","tag-first-quarter-earnings","tag-imarketkorea","tag-mro","tag-pyeongtaek-p4-p5","tag-samsung","tag-samsung-chip-investment","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-semiconductor-super-cycle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82233","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=82233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}