Tuesday, June 4th, 2013
SEOUL, KOREA - The Korea Exchange and Korea Listed Companies Association announced on June 2 that the first-quarter sales revenue of 504 publicly listed companies out of 663 that closed their books in December was 459,749.6 billion won, up 1.83 percent from the same quarter last year. Their operating profit rose 0.94 percent to 26.6 trillion won during the same period. Meanwhile, their net profit shrank 12.75 percent to 17,854.7 billion won from 20,464.5 billion won.
As for the operating profit rate, it declined slightly to 5.66 percent from 5.71 percent. The net profit ratio too fell to 3.88 percent from 4.53 percent. That means the companies earned only 39 won from selling 1,000 won worth of goods and services.
The percentage of companies that took losses has also increased. Including 52 firms that newly turned to the red, a total of 142 companies (28.2%) reported losses. Of these, GS Engineering & Construction had the highest amount of loss with 412.2 billion won, followed by Korean Airlines (303.3 billion won), Samsung Engineering (180.4 billion won), and SK Networks (176.4 billion won).