Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix employees set to receive 1 billion won in bonuses; shareholders panic over ‘stock-price collapse’

[Financial News] Employees at Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are set to receive bonuses worth hundreds of millions of won amid the semiconductor boom, but shareholders of the two companies are left crestfallen as their stock prices collapse by nearly 30%.
According to the Korea Exchange, as of 10:10 a.m. on the 15th, SK Hynix shares were trading at 1,268,000 won, down 10.64% from the previous day. Compared with the 1,841,000 won closing price on the 2nd of this month, the shares have fallen by more than 30% in just two weeks. Samsung Electronics shares were also down 8.51% at the same time, trading at 212,500 won. Compared with their price of 273,000 won on the 2nd of this month, the shares have fallen 20%.
Han Ji-young, a researcher at Kiwoom Securities, said, “Despite ASML’s strong earnings and upward revisions to equipment demand, the impact was significant from increased selling pressure across the entire U.S. AI value chain, driven by September’s Consumer Price Index (CPI), the renewed emergence of AI credit risk following a sharp rise in CoreWeave’s corporate bond yields, and concerns over weakening returns on AI investment sparked by a Gartner report.” She added, “The South Korean stock market also opened lower amid a sharp, across-the-board drop in AI infrastructure stocks.”
However, employees at the two companies are set to receive bonuses close to 1 billion won. Last month, SK Hynix management and labor also agreed to pay 50% of the Profit Share (PS) bonus in cash and the remaining 50% in company shares. Assuming annual operating profit of 250 trillion won this year, the average bonus per employee is estimated at roughly 700 million won. The bonus is expected to comprise 350 million won each in cash and company shares.
The National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU), using a securities-industry consensus of about 370 trillion won as its benchmark, estimated that pre-tax bonuses including the Overperformance Incentive (OPI) for employees with base annual salaries in the low 80-million-won range would reach about 750 million won in the Memory Business Division, 530 million won in the common organization, and 240 million won in the System LSI and Foundry divisions. The semiconductor industry expects that if the performance of both companies improves in the second half of the year, the actual bonuses employees receive next year will be even higher.
[email protected] Han Young-jun Reporter