SK Telecom (017670.KS) shares rose more than 4% during intraday trading on Wednesday, with the rally attributed to expectations that Anthropic, the U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) company in which the carrier holds a stake, will swing to its first quarterly profit.
According to the Korea Exchange, SK Telecom was trading at 104,000 won as of 9:35 a.m., up 1.36% from the previous session. The stock earlier touched a 52-week high of 111,500 won during the session before paring gains.
Anthropic was cited as the catalyst behind SK Telecom's strength. Major foreign media recently reported that Anthropic is expected to post operating profit of $559 million in the second quarter of this year, marking its first-ever quarterly profit. SK Telecom previously invested $100 million in Anthropic in 2023.
"Reports indicated that Anthropic's new internal financial outlook projects second-quarter revenue of $10.9 billion and operating profit of $559 million," said Lee Young-jin, an analyst at Samsung Securities. "If the target is achieved, first-half revenue would reach $15.7 billion, including $4.8 billion in the first quarter, bringing the company close to its $16 billion annual revenue forecast for this year."
He added, "This is the result of explosive demand for Anthropic's models and products, which demonstrate strong performance in coding and agentic tasks, as enterprise AI adoption accelerates. Among frontier AI companies, various strategies are being deployed to expand enterprise AI."
SK Telecom's own earnings remain solid. The company's first-quarter operating profit reached 537.6 billion won, reflecting tightened efforts to improve profitability. "As SK Telecom holds the only AI full stack (infrastructure, model, and service) in Korea, monetization of its AI business segment will gradually expand," said Choi Yu-jin, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities.
