Daily Brief Financials: Samsung Life Insurance, Nikkei 225, Chesapeake Financial Shares In and more

In today’s briefing:

Samsung Insider’s Flawed Premise on the Samsung C&T Forced Holdco Conversion Issue
Nikkei 225 Tactical Outlook Amidst Sony Corp’s Financial Group Spin-Off Talks
CPKF: Raising our 2025 Diluted EPS Estimate by 0.20 to $2.70 and Initiating our 2026 Estimate at $2.85

Samsung Insider’s Flawed Premise on the Samsung C&T Forced Holdco Conversion Issue

The FTC uses acquisition cost, not market value, so Samsung C&T’s existing 5.05% Samsung Elec stake is booked at KRW 400B
Samsung Life only needs to sell ~5.5% of Samsung Elec, not the full 8.51%, leaving Samsung C&T with a ~KRW 10T buffer before hitting the 50% holdco threshold.
The holdco risk is overblown—unlikely without rule changes. The Bio spin-off looks like prep for Samsung C&T to buy Samsung Elec stake, driving re-rating upside for C&T and Life.

The Nikkei 225 (NKY INDEX) is currently rallying after a modest pullback last week.
The index went above our model resistance level at 38347 (50% prob. of reversal). It’s modestly overbought and could go higher.
News can perturbate the trajectory of the index but at the moment the Nikkei seems directed towards higher prices: 39216 is our profit target for this rally, before Jun 27th.

CPKF’s first quarter net earnings, excluding a one-time charge from repositioning its investment securities portfolio of $8.0 million aftertax, or $1.69 per diluted share, increased $0.8 million, or 29%, to $3.55 million year over year, while 2025’s first quarter diluted EPS rose $0.17, or 29%, to $0.75.
Including this one-time charge, CPKF reported a net loss of $4.45 million, or a diluted loss per share of $0.94.
This was better than our estimate, which had called for flat net earnings (off by $0.8 million), as well as flat diluted EPS (off by $0.17).We are increasing our diluted EPS estimate for 2025 by $0.20 from $2.50 to $2.70, representing a 12% gain over 2024’s actual EPS of $2.42.

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