SEOUL, November 10 (AJP) — Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, South Korea's two chipmaking giants, led a 24.2 percent surge in minority shareholder counts across the country's listed companies over 18 months, even as most firms lost investors.
Samsung Electronics added 2.81 million minority shareholders, bringing its total to 7.97 million at the end of June, up 54.5 percent from the end of 2024, according to a study released Tuesday by corporate research firm Leaders Index.
SK hynix saw an even sharper increase, with its shareholder count surging 343.3 percent from about 781,000 to 3.46 million over the same period.
Together, the two memory chip giants accounted for about 5.49 million additional shareholder entries, more than a third of the net increase across the companies surveyed.
Leaders Index analyzed 1,992 listed companies with comparable minority-shareholder disclosures for the end of 2024 and June 2026. Their combined shareholder counts rose from 65.52 million to 81.37 million, an increase of 15.85 million.
Yet only 601 companies gained minority shareholders, while 1,384 saw their numbers decline.
The number of shares held by minority shareholders also fell, with their combined holdings dropping 10.3 percent from 42.72 billion to 38.33 billion shares. Their share of total issued stock also slipped from 49.5 percent to 47.6 percent.
Beyond the two chip giants, Doosan Enerbility ranked third with 1.73 million minority shareholders, followed by Kakao with 1.49 million, Naver with 1.40 million and LG Electronics with 1.23 million.
LS Electric, an electrical equipment and power infrastructure company, recorded the fastest growth among the surveyed firms. Its minority-shareholder base surged 720.3 percent from about 65,400 to 536,400.
Other companies with sharp increases included Doosan Enerbility at 279.9 percent, Hanmi Semiconductor at 198.5 percent and Samsung Heavy Industries at 177.5 percent.
Unlike the company-level figures, which count investors more than once if they own shares in multiple firms, separate data showed that 14.56 million investors owned Korean listed stocks at the end of 2025, up 2.3 percent from a year earlier. Each was counted only once, regardless of how many companies they held shares in. Of those, 14.42 million were individual investors, accounting for 99.1 percent of the total.
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