Here’s another Korean net net for you that I put into its own writeup. This one was too damn interesting not to spend significant time on.
This is a potential asset play and a bet (quite a one) on improving governance, slowly forced by Korea’s Value-up reforms.
It’s an interesting setup. Local forums are all over it, and a couple of news outlets have picked it up this month, putting the company’s misconduct in the spotlight.
And good God it’s cheap.
The stock is priced at 18% of NAV. That’s taking the company’s own appraisal of its investment property, taxing every gain in full, haircutting the inventory and receivables hard, and giving no credit at all for the land under its factories. I believe there’s huge land value within PP&E too, all of which we’ll walk through in this writeup.
Last month, so after the H1 2026 results, the company sold one of its properties for cash and fetched what amounts to ~2/3 of its own market cap. Pro forma, this puts the EV in negative territory. Data providers haven’t picked up on it, and the market hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care, even though the company’s remaining properties are still likely worth >3x the market cap.
While the investment case is fully based on this valuable property portfolio and huge net cash position, the operating business has been profitable for more than 30 years straight, albeit slightly, and has existed since the 1950s. The company has paid a dividend every year since the late 1970s.
Let’s get to it.