[Click eStock] "SKT, Shareholder Returns Ceiling Is Open"

Daishin Securities forecasted on the 9th that SK Telecom (SKT)'s recently announced shareholder return policy has "an open ceiling, and the scale of shareholder returns will continue to increase." Since the dividend per share (DPS) has never decreased since 2007, it is also expected that the profit improvement trend will continue until 2030.

On the 25th of last month, SKT announced that it would use "more than 50% of the annual consolidated adjusted net income" for shareholder returns, combining dividends and share buybacks until 2026. Heejae Kim, an analyst at Daishin Securities, estimated that "this year, SKT's total shareholder return will reach 900 billion KRW, combining last year's dividend of 750 billion KRW and share repurchases worth 150 billion KRW."

Analyst Kim stated, "SKT did not specify a minimum guarantee for the shareholder return ratio when announcing the value-up program, and applying the 50% return rate seems to reduce the scale of shareholder returns," but added, "However, since SKT's DPS has never decreased since 2007 and considering the situation of the largest shareholder, the possibility of a dividend reduction is very low."

He advised, "SKT will maintain a policy that guarantees at least the previous year's dividend level in the future," and "It should be interpreted that SKT only introduced the expression 'more than 50%' as part of the value-up program." He continued, "SKT is expected to achieve nearly 10% annual performance improvement, and capital expenditures (CAPEX) will gradually decrease until 2030, when the introduction of 6th generation mobile communication (6G) is anticipated," adding, "The increasing trend in net income, which serves as the basis for shareholder returns, will also continue."

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