▲ AI PRISM* Personalized Economic Briefing
* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an artificial intelligence-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six tailored news items for each reader type.
[Key Issues Briefing]
■ Hyundai Motor's offensive: Hyundai Motor (005380) has taken an aggressive stance to confront falling sales and deteriorating profitability head-on, simultaneously expanding new model volume and production capacity. The automaker is playing different cards by market — hybrids in North America, battery electric vehicles in Europe and SUVs in India — while broadening its business scope to include robotaxis and humanoid robots.
■ The shareholder-return trap: With mandatory cancellation of treasury shares and separate taxation of dividend income taking effect, shareholder returns have emerged as a central theme in Korea's stock market. In Japan, however, which went down the same road first, return policies unsupported by profit growth failed to translate into a re-rating of share prices, suggesting that core business competitiveness is the key.
■ Shifting NAND landscape: China's Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) has set a target of becoming the world's largest NAND flash producer next year, backed by initial public offering proceeds. While U.S. sanctions targeted cutting-edge lithography equipment, Chinese producers have narrowed the gap through stacking structures and process optimization, and their capacity additions are raising concerns that they could disrupt memory supply and demand.
[Corporate CEO News of Interest]
1. Hyundai Motor Shifts to Offense, Adding 1.27 Million Units of Capacity and 18 All-New Models
- Key summary: Hyundai Motor will introduce more than 100 new vehicle models over the five years through 2030, including full and partial redesigns and derivative models, with at least 18 of them all-new vehicles entering segments where the company currently has no offerings. President Jose Munoz presented the growth roadmap at the 2026 CEO Investor Day held at the Conrad Hotel in Seoul's Yeouido district on the 26th. It is a decisive move that comes as global sales in the first half fell 4.9% from a year earlier to 1,966,267 units and the operating margin slipped to 5.6%. Accordingly, the company will expand global production capacity, currently around 5 million units, by 1.27 million units by 2030, and has raised its 2030 operating margin target to 9% or more from the previous 8% to 9%.
2. Shares Fail to Rise Despite Shareholder Returns — Japan's "High-Dividend Trap"
- Key summary: An analysis found that long-term share performance is determined by whether profit growth supports shareholder returns rather than by the size of the returns themselves. According to the Korea Exchange, cash dividends declared by Korean listed companies in the first half of this year totaled 43.2 trillion won, about 85% of last year's full-year figure, and treasury share cancellations last year came to 21.4 trillion won, exceeding acquisitions for the first time. In Japan, NTT, which has raised its dividend for 16 consecutive years, saw its shares gain about 7.5% this year, far below the Topix's 20.6%, while the banking index — where earnings recovery and expanded returns coincided — has risen fivefold since the start of 2022. An analysis by SK Securities (001510) likewise showed telecom services scoring 76 points on capacity for returns but just 31 on earnings momentum, while semiconductors, despite a payout ratio of 15.5%, scored the highest at 100 points on earnings momentum.
3. China's YMTC Challenges Samsung, SK: "No. 1 in NAND Next Year"
- Key summary: Chinese chipmaker YMTC told investors it plans to overtake Samsung Electronics (005930) and SK hynix (000660) to become the world's largest NAND flash producer by the end of next year, the Financial Times reported on the 25th. YMTC filed an application last week with the Shanghai Stock Exchange for an IPO worth 33 billion yuan (about 6.9 trillion won), with the proceeds to be used mainly to upgrade production facilities and develop technology. First-quarter revenue was 47 billion yuan and net profit 33 billion yuan, more than double its full-year results from last year, placing it third in the global NAND market according to TrendForce. Concerns have also been raised, however, that aggressive capacity expansion by Chinese producers could create oversupply and push memory prices lower.
[Corporate CEO Reference News]
4. Unitree's Valuation Jumps on China's Policy Boost, but Industrial Sales Are Just 9%
- Key summary: Shares of Chinese humanoid robot maker Unitree, which surged 460% on their trading debut, have halved within a week. The stock closed at 591.59 yuan on the Shanghai exchange on the 26th, down about 46% from its intraday high on the first day of trading. Subscription fever ran so high that the allocation rate for retail investors came to just 0.018%, the lowest ever on the STAR Market, and an initial float of only 7.44% further fueled the price surge, but profit-taking then poured in and the stock fell for four consecutive sessions. In the first three quarters of last year, 73.6% of humanoid robot revenue came from orders by universities and research institutes, while applications for actual demand such as industrial manufacturing accounted for only about 9%, raising doubts about profitability. Meanwhile, IPO proceeds raised by Chinese companies in the third quarter reached 119 billion yuan (about 24.4 trillion won), surpassing the boom period of the third quarter of 2023 and prompting calls for a review of the listing system.
5. ESS Moves Into the Living Room — Ceding Ground to China Could Mean Losing the AI Lead
- Key summary: As solar, wind and other renewable energy installations surge, energy storage systems (ESS) tailored for homes have entered the commercialization stage. At Hyundai Engineering & Construction's (000720) "All Life Care House" in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, a residential ESS has been installed using vanadium ion batteries with a non-flammable water-based electrolyte, built into interior tiles; developer Standard Energy expects installation in ordinary homes to be possible from 2028. As the battery market expands beyond electric vehicles into robots, drones and ESS, the global battery market, worth $173.25 billion last year, is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 10.45% to $422.27 billion by 2034, according to Fortune Business Insights. With the U.S. imposing tariffs of more than 40% on Chinese ESS products, some see room to use this as leverage, while others argue that fiscal resources should be concentrated on next-generation batteries to build a domestic market first.
6. Six Strategic Industries Need 22.8 Critical Minerals on Average — Most Entirely Imported
- Key summary: An average of 22.8 critical minerals are required to operate in the six national advanced strategic industries, including semiconductors, secondary batteries and robotics. According to the Korea Environmental Industry & Technology Institute (KEITI), the defense industry requires 37 critical minerals, semiconductors 22, secondary batteries 15 and robotics 30, with each industry's requirements accounting for 40% to 95% of all critical minerals. Twenty-nine minerals, including lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earths, have no domestic production base, leaving all demand met by imports, while more than 90% of gallium and indium comes from China. Meanwhile, the government plans to source 20% of demand for the 10 leading strategic critical minerals through recycling by 2030, and calls have been raised for demand-side support measures such as price floors and long-term supply contracts.
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