November 29, 2024

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A passenger walks past the Samsung logo in the company's Seoul office. (Yonhap)

Sixteen affiliates of South Korea's No. 1 business conglomerate Samsung have seen a drop in stock market cap by 129.36 trillion won ($90.78 billion) combined during the period of January to October, data showed Tuesday.

This means nearly 20 percent of the market cap of the affiliates has evaporated compared to the end of 2021, according to the stock market data compiled by business intelligence Leaders Index. As a result, Samsung's 16 affiliates saw a total market cap of 541.8 trillion won as of Friday.

Most of the losses stemmed from tech giant Samsung Electronics. The Korean stock market bellwether's 27.1 percent fall in the past 10 months translated into a loss of 127.16 trillion won in market cap.

This comes amid growing macroeconomic pressure and declining consumer demand from persisting external uncertainties, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as stated in Samsung Electronics' recent third-quarter earnings call.

Samsung's 16 affiliates were among the estimates of all 303 listed companies on the Korea Exchange under the umbrella of 70 "large" business conglomerates with over 10 trillion won in assets.

In Korea, 70 out of 76 large business groups had at least one listed company under the umbrella.

According to Leaders Index, over 328.64 trillion won of market cap by 303 listed companies -- all of which are an affiliate of a large business group -- had disappeared over the past 10 months. Their total market cap stood at 1.458 trillion won on Friday.

Internet firms such as Kakao and Naver, as well as gaming firms Krafton and Netmarble were the four companies with their affiliates having the biggest plunge in market cap. They all lost more than half of their market cap as of end-2021.

Meanwhile, Samsung maintained the No. 1 spot in the combined market cap of all listed affiliates nonetheless. Samsung was followed by LG, SK, Hyundai Motor and Posco. LG rose to No. 2 thanks to the stock flotation of lithium-ion battery manufacturer LG Energy Solution.

By Son Ji-hyoung (consnow@heraldcorp.com)