[Click eStock] "Kia Achieves Strong Q1 Performance... Target Price Raised to 140,000 Won"

On the 29th, Kiwoom Securities raised the target price for Kia to 140,000 KRW, expressing expectations that its market capitalization could rise to the 50 trillion KRW level. The investment rating was maintained at 'Outperform.'

Shin Yoon-chul, a researcher at Kiwoom Securities, stated, "Kia has achieved the performance of narrowing the quarterly operating profit gap with Hyundai Motor to the 100 billion KRW level, which led to the upward revision of the target price. However, since more time is needed to verify whether the quarterly operating profit strength has consistently risen to the 3 trillion KRW level, we have decided to maintain the existing Outperform rating once again," he explained.

He added, "Starting in the second half of the year, Kia's new BEV, the EV3, which will be prominently introduced, is scheduled to begin mass production from June, and its specific product competitiveness is expected to be confirmed from early June."

Kia recorded sales of 26.2 trillion KRW and an operating profit of 3.43 trillion KRW in the first quarter, surpassing market expectations and our estimates. Researcher Shin Yoon-chul analyzed, "In the previous quarter's performance review report, we evaluated that Kia, which presented a relatively aggressive 2024 business plan compared to Hyundai Motor, was tasked with continuously proving the feasibility of achieving its business plan throughout the year based on P, Q, and C strong performance. We believe that the first quarter results this year have substantially demonstrated this."

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