South Korean stocks rise for fourth session as Samsung Elec shines

SEOUL: Round-up of South Korean financial markets:

South Korean stocks close higher, tracking Wall Street’s overnight rally

• South Korean shares rose on Wednesday for a fourth straight session, as Samsung Electronics gained after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he believes the Korean company is capable of creating a new design on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chip. The won strengthened, while the benchmark bond yield fell.

• The benchmark KOSPI was up 27.13 points, or 1.09%, at 2,519.23, as of 0158 GMT.

• Among index heavyweights, chipmaker Samsung Electronics rose 2.53% and peer SK Hynix gained 0.05%, while battery maker LG Energy Solution climbed 1.92%.

• Nvidia’s Huang told reporters in Las Vegas on Tuesday that Samsung has to “engineer a new design” to supply HBM chips to his company, adding that “they can do it and they are working very fast,” Korea JoongAng Daily reported.

• Samsung Electronics released a fourth-quarter operating profit estimate that missed analyst estimates by a large margin, as it lagged behind rival SK Hynix in supplying high-end chips to Nvidia.

• Hyundai Motor added 0.71% and sister automaker Kia Corp gained 1.51%, while search engine Naver traded unchanged and instant messenger Kakao was down 0.78%.

• Of the total 942 traded issues, 494 shares advanced, while 377 declined.

• The won was quoted at 1,451.3 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform, 0.12% higher than its previous close at 1,453.0.

• Foreigners were net buyers of shares worth 11.7 billion won on the main board.

• The KOSPI has risen 4.99% so far this year, and gained 0.5% in the previous 30 trading sessions.

• The won has gained 1.5% against the dollar so far this year.

• In money and debt markets, March futures on three-year treasury bonds rose 0.01 point to 106.86.

• The most liquid three-year Korean treasury bond yield rose by 1.1 basis points to 2.519%, while the benchmark 10-year yield fell by 0.2 basis point to 2.807%.