THE KOREA ECONOMIC DAILY, GLOBAL EDITION

Offshore investors net purchased nearly 23 trillion won ($16.7 billion) worth of South Korea-listed stocks in the first half of this year. The buying spree represents their largest-ever net buying of the country’s stocks for the half-year period on the back of a revived risk appetite for local semiconductor firms benefiting from the AI chip boom.

According to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) on Monday, foreign investors net bought 22.9 trillion won worth of Korean shares in the first six months of this year, the highest-ever amount for a six-month period since related data began to be compiled in 1998.

Growing expectations of rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve earlier this year revived the risk appetite, prompting investors to rush in to snap up Korean microchip stocks projected to ride the AI chip craze, analysts said.

Overseas investors net bought about 2.9 trillion won worth of Korean shares in June, extending their buying spree for an eighth consecutive month since November last year.

In June, they bought 1.9 trillion won worth of stocks listed on Korea’s main Kospi bourse and 949 billion won worth of junior Kosdaq market-listed stocks.  

US Investors were the biggest net buyers of Korean stocks worth 2.1 trillion won, followed by investors from Luxembourg, who snapped up 1 trillion won. 

As of end-June, foreigners owned 859.2 trillion won worth of stocks in Korea, controlling about 30% of the country’s total market capitalization.

SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AND SK HYNIX LEAD

Foreign holdings of Korea’s top two memory chipmakers Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. increased from Jan. 2 to June 28. 

During the cited period, offshore investor holdings of SK Hynix, the world’s biggest high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chip producer, rose to 56.17% from 53.17%. Over the same period, its stock price climbed about 40% to 236,500 won.

The HBM chip is essential to running so-called AI chips such as Nvidia Corp.’s graphics processing units (GPUs). SK Hynix is a primary supplier of HBM products to Nvidia.

Foreign holdings of Korea’s and the world’s No. 1 memory chipmaker Samsung Electronics also rose, to 55.90% from 54.00% over the same period, with its stock price climbing to 81,500 won from 79,600 won.

Nvidia is currently verifying Samsung Electronics’ HBM chips.

Even before the test result is announced, investors rushed to gobble up Korea’s bellwether stock as the chip giant is expected to win HBM orders from the US AI chip giant.

Investors also cheered Samsung Electronics' rosy outlook after on Friday it flagged a more than 15-fold increase in its second-quarter operating profit on the AI boom, which has ramped up demand for memory chips.

Over the past 15 trading sessions, overseas investors remained net buyers of Samsung Electronics shares on all but four days.

According to data from the the country's sole stock exchange, Korea Exchange, Samsung Electronics was foreign investors’ top pick in the first half of this year, with their net purchases amounting to 7.99 trillion won.

Offshore investors' second-favorite stock was SK Hynix with 3.80 trillion won in net buying of its shares, followed by shares of Hyundai Motor Co. worth 3.45 trillion won.

The two chip stocks accounted for 51.2% of foreigners’ total net purchases of Korean stocks in the first half of this year.

Samsung Electronics ended up 0.3% at 87,400 won on Monday while SK Hynix shed 1.1% to close at 233,500 won.

Write to Han-Gyeol Seon at always@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.