✏️ Corrected 30 Aug 2026 — every row of this article’s financial table was wrong, and the “net asset value” row was not a net asset value at all. The NAV section has been recalculated from scratch.

Why the NAV row mattered most. The article defined NAV as “the market value of listed holdings plus the book value of unlisted assets and net cash”, then printed numbers that were the balance-sheet equity instead — within 4.7% and 0.8% of consolidated total equity for the two years. That broke the argument arithmetically, not just cosmetically: SK Hynix’s 146,100,000 shares were worth ₩354tn at the price used in this article, so a “NAV” of ₩38tn could not contain the single asset the thesis rested on. Measured against the stated market capitalisation, the article’s own table implied a premium, not the 56.5% discount it claimed. We have rebuilt the NAV from the filing’s own component values rather than patch the number.

Sources: DART, SK Square FY2025 business report, filed 17 Mar 2026, rcpNo 20260317000830; OpenDART consolidated and separate financial-statement APIs for the same filing. Our corrections policy.

*Market report as of 3 July 2026 · financials and NAV corrected 30 August 2026*

SK Square Valuation: NAV Discount Play and Hynix Equity Catalyst

SK Square (KRX: 402340) is South Korea’s tech-focused investment holding company (Wikipedia). Established on 2 November 2021 in a horizontal spin-off from SK Telecom, and approved as a holding company by the Korea Fair Trade Commission on 28 December 2021, it was built to manage and grow a portfolio of semiconductor, platform and commerce investments. One of those investments dwarfs everything else: 146,100,000 shares of SK Hynix, stated in the filing as a 20.1% stake and described there as the company’s principal affiliate.

As Korea’s memory semiconductor cycle ran through 2026, SK Square’s asset value moved with it. This report works through what the holding is actually worth, where the discount comes from, what the company has committed to under Korea’s Corporate Value-up Program, and what the rest of the portfolio contributes.

🔎 What Is SK Square’s Operating Profit, Really?

It is almost entirely equity-method income from SK Hynix, booked inside the operating line because that is how a Korean holding company reports its main business — which is why FY2025 operating profit of $5.70bn sits on revenue of $0.92bn.

This is the first thing to understand about the accounts, and it is not obvious from a screener. Look at the shape of the income statement:

Source: DART, SK Square FY2025 business report (rcpNo 20260317000830), consolidated (CFS) and separate (OFS) statements, via the OpenDART financial-statement API. Won amounts as filed, consolidated: revenue ₩2,008,116m / ₩1,649,858m / ₩1,411,521m; operating profit −₩2,333,631m / ₩3,920,647m / ₩8,797,421m; profit for the year −₩1,314,834m / ₩3,650,515m / ₩8,818,695m; attributable to owners −₩1,287,048m / ₩3,713,971m / ₩8,824,131m; basic EPS −₩9,259 / ₩27,772 / ₩66,713. Separate: operating profit ₩94,005m / ₩112,533m / ₩300,652m; net result −₩314,171m / −₩179,595m / −₩105,572m. FX ₩1,542/$; dollar figures rounded independently.

The reconciliation is in the associates note. During FY2025, SK Square recognised ₩9,037,459m of equity-method income from SK Hynix and received ₩354,877m in dividends from it, taking the carrying value of the stake from ₩16,804,916m to ₩26,181,548m. That single line is larger than the whole consolidated operating profit. (Source: same filing, note 10, “관계기업 및 공동기업투자”)

And the operating businesses it actually controls?

The filing publishes operating profit for each major consolidated subsidiary. For FY2025:

Source: DART rcpNo 20260317000830, “사업의 개요”, 연결대상 주요종속회사 table. Won as filed: ₩300,652m; −₩39,624m; −₩14,142m; −₩9,687m; −₩3,984m; ₩8,521m; ₩11,512m. The filing notes these are each company’s own K-IFRS figures, not consolidation-adjusted.

Four of the six operating businesses lost money. The two that made money made $13M between them. This is not a criticism of the investment case — it is a description of what the investment case is. SK Square is a claim on SK Hynix with a portfolio of small, mostly loss-making platform assets attached.

📈 So What Is SK Square’s Net Asset Value?

Roughly $231bn at the price at writing, against a market capitalisation of $136bn — a discount of about 41%, with SK Hynix accounting for 99.4% of the asset side.

Here is the calculation, using the definition this article set out at the start: market value of listed holdings, plus the book value of unlisted holdings, plus net cash at the parent. Every input is either an exchange price or a line in the filing.

Sources: DART rcpNo 20260317000830 — the associates note gives SK Hynix and Dreamus share counts and the filing’s own year-end market values (₩95,111,100m and ₩23,511m); the separate balance sheet gives investments ₩5,347,588m, cash ₩534,014m and total liabilities ₩314,393m; the “타법인출자 현황” schedule gives SK Hynix’s separate-basis carrying value of ₩3,374,726m; the share-price table gives the December 2025 average close of ₩312,238. July 2026 prices are settled closes from the Korea Exchange (KRX) for 3 Jul 2026. Share count 131,958,386 is the total issued shares stated in SK Square’s 22 Jul 2026 cancellation disclosure. FX ₩1,542/$ for both dates — a simplification; using each date’s own rate would move the dollar levels but not the discount percentages, which are computed in won.

Why book equity is not NAV

The gap between the two is the whole point of a holding-company discount analysis, and the original version of this article collapsed it. SK Square carries SK Hynix under the equity method at ₩26.18tn — its share of Hynix’s net assets plus a ₩1.12tn investment difference. That number flows into book equity. The market value of the same shares at the end of 2025 was ₩95.11tn, and by July 2026 it was ₩354tn. Book equity understates the asset by a factor of three or more, which is why a “discount to book” and a “discount to NAV” are entirely different statistics.

You can see it in the multiples. At ₩1,589,000, SK Square traded at 7.6× its own book equity and at the same moment at a 41% discount to the market value of what it owned. Both are true. Only one of them tells you anything about the investment.

Note: the chart that originally sat here plotted the incorrect NAV and discount-rate series and has been removed. The bridge above is the replacement.

💡 Lingo Check: NAV, Equity Method and Value-Up

🚀 The Hynix Connection

SK Square’s asset value is SK Hynix’s share price, with a lag and a discount. The filing spells out how big the underlying business had become: SK Hynix’s summary financials, as presented in SK Square’s associates note, show FY2025 revenue of ₩97,146,675m, operating profit of ₩47,206,319m and net profit of ₩42,947,902m, against ₩66,192,960m / ₩23,467,319m / ₩19,796,902m the year before. (Source: DART rcpNo 20260317000830, note 10)

SK Hynix’s own Nasdaq ADR debut put the value-versus-price dynamic on display: the ADR surged on listing even as the Korean shares later sold off — a live lesson in how NAV, premiums and arbitrage interact for a holding-company thesis like this one.

Dividend flow-through

SK Square received ₩354,877m in dividends from SK Hynix during FY2025, as disclosed in the movement schedule for the carrying value of the stake. That is the cash the holding company actually collects from its main asset. For scale, it is roughly 4% of the equity-method income recognised in the same year — the other 96% is an accounting entry, not money.

The 20.1% is real, and so is the effective rate

One detail worth noting for anyone modelling the stake: the filing gives the ownership ratio as 20.1% of SK Hynix’s issued shares, but states that the equity method was applied at an effective ratio of 20.82% at the year end (21.20% the year before), because SK Hynix holds treasury stock. The share count — 146,100,000 — is what matters for a NAV calculation, and that is the number used above.

🔬 Portfolio Optimisation & Non-semiconductor Holdings

Beyond memory semiconductors, SK Square holds platform, commerce and security assets. The FY2025 filing shows an active year of restructuring rather than a passive one.

• 11st (11번가) — e-commerce, still inside the group but reorganised during FY2025: the parent’s direct 80.3% shareholding (41,123,545 shares) went to nil in the separate-basis investment schedule while its stake in SK Planet rose from 86.3% to 99.5%. It lost ₩39.6bn at the operating line.
• TMAP Mobility (티맵모빌리티) — Korea’s leading navigation and mobility platform, held at 63.2%. Operating loss ₩14.1bn.
• One Store (원스토어) — independent app marketplace. Operating loss ₩9.7bn.
• SK Shieldus — physical and information security, held as a joint venture at 32.0%; it absorbed Korea Security Holdings on 30 December 2025, and SK Square received 43,614,686 shares in the merger.

The filing also shows genuine disposals: the entire 10.0% stake in Carrot General Insurance was sold for ₩36.0bn, recognising a ₩14.4bn gain, and Spark Plus was exited. Against that, impairments were taken on WAVVE Americas (₩25.5bn) and Onmind.

⚖️ What Has SK Square Committed to Under Value-Up?

A NAV discount of 30% or less by 2028, a return on equity above its cost of equity through 2026–28, and a price-to-book ratio above 1.0 by 2028 — targets that were tightened, not met, in the most recent filing.

This is a correction to the original text, which said the company was targeting a discount below 50% by the end of 2026. The 24 November 2025 Value-Up disclosure states the change explicitly: the 2024 plan’s target of “NAV discount of 50% or less” was replaced in the 2025 plan by “NAV discount of 30% or less by 2028.” The ROE and PBR target years were pushed out by a year at the same time.

The same filing lists the concrete actions attached to it: a further ₩100bn of share purchases in November 2025, cancellation of 450,000 treasury shares already held, and additional outside directors to strengthen board independence. (Source: DART, SK Square Corporate Value-Up disclosure, filed 24 Nov 2025, rcpNo 20251124800241)

The cancellations, counted

SK Square does buy back and cancel shares, and unlike many Korean holding companies it cancels rather than parks them in treasury. Here is the whole record over the period around this article, from the individual cancellation filings:

Sources: DART share-cancellation disclosures rcpNo 20251113800638, 20260325800742 and 20260722800540. Each filing states its own valuation basis; note that the November 2025 amount is a carrying-value figure while the two 2026 amounts are market-price figures, so the won amounts are not directly comparable.

Two things follow. First, the programme is genuine: total issued shares fell from 132,540,858 to 131,923,998 over nine months, and the company cancels rather than warehouses. Second, at 0.47% it is not the reason the stock moved in 2026 — the SK Hynix share price is. Any claim that cancellations are “structurally boosting EPS” needs to be sized: the arithmetic effect over these three rounds is under half a percentage point.

And the dividend the original article missed entirely

SK Square paid no dividend for the 2025 financial year, then declared its first cash dividend on 30 April 2026 — and structured it so that Korean shareholders owe no tax on it.

The board approved an interim dividend of ₩1,550 per common share, a record date of 15 May 2026 and payment on 5 June 2026, for a total of ₩204,302,634,050 ($132.5M). The disclosure states the dividend yield as 0.20% against the one-week average price before the decision; at the ₩1,589,000 price used in this article it is 0.10%.

The last line of the filing is the one worth reading twice: “상기 현금 배당금은 자본준비금 감액을 통해 이익잉여금으로 전환된 금액을 재원으로 하는 배당으로 과세소득에 해당하지 않음” — the dividend is funded out of amounts converted into retained earnings by reducing the capital reserve, and therefore does not constitute taxable income. Korean companies with large paid-in capital surpluses have been using this route since the practice was clarified, and it turns a dividend into a tax-free return of capital for domestic holders. (Source: DART, SK Square cash dividend decision, filed 30 Apr 2026, rcpNo 20260430801461)

Foreign investors should not read that as a personal tax exemption: withholding treatment for a non-resident depends on the applicable tax treaty and on how the distribution is characterised in the holder’s own jurisdiction. We have not researched that, and it is not advice.

The governance detail nobody translates

The filing records a second-order effect of the November 2025 cancellation, in a note attached to the shareholder schedule: “’25년 11월 24일 453,743주를 소각함에 따라 SK(주) 지분율이 32.14%로 상승하였습니다” — as a result of cancelling 453,743 shares on 24 November 2025, SK Inc.’s shareholding rose to 32.14%.

SK Inc. bought nothing. Cancelling shares shrinks the denominator, and a controlling shareholder who never sells sees its percentage rise automatically. As of 31 December 2025 the register showed SK Inc. at 32.16% (32.2% including related parties), the National Pension Service at 8.48% and Nomura at 5.80%, with 71,960 small shareholders holding 34.82%. Buybacks in a Korean group are simultaneously a return of capital and a quiet consolidation of control. The filings state both; English-language coverage tends to report the first.

⚠️ Potential Risk Factors

🎯 Why It Matters for K-Export Stars

This article is the clearest example on the site of the failure mode we exist to avoid, and of the fix. A “NAV discount” is the entire investment case for a holding company, and the first version of this piece computed it from book equity while defining it as market value. The correct inputs — a share count, a closing price, a cost basis, a cash balance — were all sitting in one Korean-language filing that takes about twenty minutes to read. Nobody translates the associates note. That note is where the number is.

🛡️ Conclusion

New to the market itself? Start with our practical guide on how to buy Korean stocks as a foreign investor — through local brokers, ADRs, or ETFs.

Disclaimer: This report is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Figures are point-in-time and were correct as of the dates stated. Investors should conduct their own research before making financial decisions.