[Click eStock] "Woori Financial, Q2 Earnings Exceed Expectations... Target Price Up 500 Won"

Hana Securities announced on the 14th that it is slightly raising the target price for Woori Financial Group from 14,500 KRW to 15,000 KRW. This is due to expected strong second-quarter earnings and upward revisions in profit estimates following the full consolidation of Woori Investment & Securities and Woori Venture Partners as wholly owned subsidiaries.

Woori Financial Group is expected to post a net profit of 913 billion KRW in the second quarter, exceeding market consensus. Following the sale of Daewoo Shipbuilding to Hanwha, it is estimated that there was a reversal of provisions amounting to around 70 billion KRW due to an upgrade in asset quality classification. The second-quarter net interest margin (NIM) is expected to decline by 5 basis points (bp) from the previous quarter to approximately 1.60%, but loans are projected to grow by more than 1% supported by strong corporate lending. Recently, the KRW-USD exchange rate has reversed downward, significantly reducing the burden of non-cash foreign currency translation losses. The annual NIM is expected to remain at 1.59%, similar to last year. The annual net profit for this year is estimated to be about 3.2 trillion KRW, slightly higher than the previous year.

Woori Financial Group recently held a board meeting and resolved to make Woori Investment & Securities and Woori Venture Partners 100% wholly owned subsidiaries through a small-scale stock exchange of the remaining shares. As a result, the group's consolidated net profit is estimated to increase by about 50 billion KRW annually.

Notably, during the first-quarter earnings announcement, Woori Financial Group resolved to acquire treasury shares for stock cancellation amounting to approximately 100 billion KRW (about 8.5 million shares). Jeongwook Choi, a researcher at Hana Securities, said, "To avoid affecting the exchange ratio between Woori Investment & Securities and Woori Venture Partners, the company refrained from acquiring treasury shares until May and has been actively purchasing since June when the exchange ratio was finalized. So far, about 600,000 to 700,000 shares have been acquired, and since there is still room to purchase up to 8 million shares, the future supply and demand conditions are expected to be very favorable."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.