South Korean shares fall further on pharma stocks

SEOUL: Round-up of South Korean financial markets:

** South Korean shares extended falls on Tuesday, dragged by pharmaceutical stocks, while a trade row between Seoul and Tokyo showed scant signs of abating. The won strengthened, while the benchmark bond yield fell.

** Japan pushed back against calls from South Korea to scrap curbs on some high-tech exports, ratcheting up tension in a decades-old diplomatic dispute that threatens to disrupt the global supply of memory chips and smartphones. Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko said Japan was "not thinking at all" of withdrawing the curbs.

** South Korean battery and petrochemicals maker LG Chem  has not yet been hit by Japan's export curbs, but is carrying out "scenario planning" to cope with the potential fallout from the row, the company said.

** Leading pharmaceutical firms Celltrion and Samsung BioLogics stumbled 6.6% and 4.1%, respectively, making the medical sub-index the biggest loser with a 4.4% drop.

** Worries over Celltrion's second-quarter results have emerged and strained sentiment across the sector also hit Samsung BioLogics, said Kang Ha-young, an analyst at KTB Investment & Securities.

** The Seoul stock market's main KOSPI index closed down 12.14 points, or 0.59%, at 2,052.03 points, after losing over 2.2% in the previous session.

** Foreigners were net buyers of 23.4 billion won ($19.82 million) worth of shares on the main board.

** The won was quoted at 1,180.5 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform, 0.13% higher than its previous close at 1,182.0.

** In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,180.5 per U.S. dollar, unchanged from the previous day, while in non-deliverable forward trading its one-month contract  was quoted at 1,179.3 per dollar.

** MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan  was down 0.37%, after U.S. stocks slipped . Japanese stocks rose 0.14%.

** The KOSPI has risen 0.54% so far this year, and gained 0.9% in the previous 30 trading sessions.

** The current price-to-earnings ratio is 12.10, the dividend yield is 1.28% and the market capitalisation is 1,242.04 trillion won.

** The trading volume during the session on the KOSPI index  was 433.47 million shares and, of the total traded issues of 894, the number of advancing shares was 195.

** The won has lost 5.5% against the U.S dollar so far this year.

** In money and debt markets, September futures on three-year treasury bonds fell 0.02 point to 110.54, while the 3-month Certificate of Deposit rate was quoted at 1.78%.

** The most liquid 3-year Korean treasury bond yield fell by 0.6 basis point to 1.418%, while the benchmark 10-year yield declined by 0.9 basis point to 1.526%.