Doubts are mounting in the market over DB HiTek (000990), which is holding more than 1 trillion won in liquid assets in the middle of a semiconductor supercycle yet remains reluctant to spend on capacity. A boom in power semiconductors has pushed plant utilization to 95%, making new lines urgent, but a planned 1.5 trillion won investment remains in limbo, entangled with legal risk surrounding the company's founder.
DB HiTek posted first-half consolidated revenue of 774 billion won and operating profit of 172.1 billion won, the company said on the 1st. Revenue rose 21.9% and operating profit 36.2% from a year earlier. The semiconductor business, its mainstay, drove the results with revenue of 756.3 billion won, or 97.7% of the total. According to FnGuide, the consensus estimate for DB HiTek's full-year consolidated revenue is 1.668 trillion won, with operating profit of 401 billion won.
The problem is that orders have piled up to the point where the existing lines are running near their limit. Average fab utilization in the first half stood at 95.6% at the Bucheon campus and 94.1% at the Sangwoo campus in Eumseong, North Chungcheong Province, for a combined 94.9%. Standard monthly capacity, measured by wafer starts, totals about 154,000 wafers, and the current lines are running tight to meet demand. Absorbing the incoming orders would require adding lines at the Sangwoo campus by 2030, at a cost of roughly 1.5 trillion won.
DB HiTek had initially planned to fund part of the expansion through the government-led National Growth Fund, but the situation shifted abruptly as legal risk surrounding founder and Chairman Kim Joon-ki surfaced. Financial regulators and banks have effectively put funding on hold.
With outside financing out of reach, DB HiTek management floated an unusual proposal at the Korea Strategic Economy Forum in late June. The company would provide the plant building and process technology, it said, if the government would use public money to buy the equipment — a plan it described as building a public mass-production fab. Some read the proposal as an overreach, an attempt to pull in policy funds by any means available amid a conservative stance within the founding family against committing large sums of the company's own money.
Industry critics say the request does not add up: a private company earning hundreds of billions of won in profit is asking taxpayers to fund its equipment. DB HiTek's cash position is in fact substantial. As of the end of the first half, consolidated liquid assets convertible to cash within a year came to 1.2287 trillion won, including 234.5 billion won in cash and cash equivalents, 255.2 billion won in short-term financial instruments and 739 billion won in other financial assets. With total equity of 2.5612 trillion won against liabilities of 752.3 billion won, its debt-to-equity ratio is a stable 29%.
Also contentious is that the company has parked surplus funds in financial products while seeking low-interest policy loans. Most of the 739 billion won in other financial assets sits in money market funds and money market wraps. Combined with the 255.2 billion won in short-term financial instruments, the total approaches 1 trillion won — two-thirds of the 1.5 trillion won needed for the expansion.
There is another reason DB HiTek's push for outside money is drawing questions. DB World, which operates golf courses, had sought to absorb DB Metal, a ferroalloy business with little strategic overlap, before deciding in late May to halt operations there instead. Squeezed by a global steel downturn and low-priced Chinese competition, DB Metal booked a 42.9 billion won loss and shut down. That flowed through to DB HiTek's consolidated operating loss. Without it, first-half operating profit would likely have topped 200 billion won. A business mix skewed toward China is also seen as a threat to future earnings: 65.2% of DB HiTek's total revenue in the first half, or 504.8 billion won, came from China.
An industry official said the company should stop avoiding risk and asking the government for help, and instead commit the surplus funds tied up in money market funds to expanding lines. "The only way to clear away uncertainty about the future is for management to prove its commitment to investment transparently," the official said.
