Daily Brief South Korea: Samsung Electronics Pref Shares, E Mart Inc, Jyp Entertainment and more

In today’s briefing:

Clarifying Samsung Life’s Position on How Samsung Electronics Structures Its Shareholder Returns
Growing Importance of ACT – Korea’s Largest Minority Shareholders Platform
China Could Lift Ban on Korean Popular Culture (Hallyu) As Early As May 2025

Clarifying Samsung Life’s Position on How Samsung Electronics Structures Its Shareholder Returns

Samsung Life isn’t getting a boost from Samsung Fire, so they need to stay focused on managing equity to maintain their K-ICS ratio.
They’ll use capital securities issuance as a quick fix but must also monitor their Samsung Electronics stake, a major asset, to manage the situation effectively.
Samsung Electronics will likely focus on dividends over buybacks. Watch for a pair trade setup between common and preferred shares, favoring long positions on preferreds.

In this insight, we discuss about the growing importance of ACT, the largest minority shareholders platform (https://www.act.ag/) in Korea with nearly 100,000 members and market share of more than 50%.
Recently, ACT has been demanding corporate governance improvements on the following companies: E-Mart, DB Hitek, Lotte Shopping, Youlchon Chem, Hanmi Science, and Solu-M.
ACT has played an important role in the recent shareholder return polices announced by E-Mart which announced a sharply higher total shareholder return policy including higher dividends and share cancellations.

One of the big thematic events on the Korean stock market has been the expectation that China could lift ban on Korean popular culture (Hallyu) as early as May 2025.
China’s President Xi recently stated “Cultural exchanges are a valuable part of our bilateral relations [between China and Korea]. We should avoid any problems occurring in handling such matters.”
We provide a list of 40 stocks in Korea that could most benefit from the end of lifting ban of Korean popular culture.

💡 Before it’s here, it’s on Smartkarma

The Smartkarma Preview Pass is your entry to the Independent Investment Research Network