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In today’s briefing:
- Recently Observed Market Flow Movements Related to Korea’s Value-Up Initiatives
- SK Innovation and SK E&S to Discuss a Potential Merger on 17 July
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Recently Observed Market Flow Movements Related to Korea’s Value-Up Initiatives
- Nine companies disclosed value-up plans, with four official and five pending disclosures. Initially, these announcements boosted stock prices, but long-term correlations were inconclusive. Yet, shareholder returns notably rose in H1.
- NPS increased stakes in three of the nine recently announced value-up companies. They share traits in value-up trading (large caps & low PBR), potentially guiding our strategy as NPS enters.
- BlackRock’s Hong Kong branch has recently engaged with six Korean asset management firms for potential entrustment of its Asian fund’s Korean investment portion, focusing on the value-up policy.
SK Innovation and SK E&S to Discuss a Potential Merger on 17 July
- SK Innovation (096770 KS) and SK E&S plan to hold a board meeting on 17 July to discuss the potential merger between the two companies.
- If this merger is successful, it would create the eighth largest company in Korea with a combined assets of 106 trillion won (US$77 billion).
- Although the merger ratio is not yet available, we believe that this potential merger could potentially benefit SK E&S and SK Inc but could be negative on SK Innovation.