Buying Just 10% of Westinghouse Would Cost KEPCO 4.1 Trillion Won

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1. [Exclusive] Stake Must Top 10% for Director Nomination Rights; 'KEPCO to Bear the Cost'

- Key points: The U.S. side has conveyed to Seoul that the price of a Westinghouse stake is separate from the $200 billion cap on the fund for investment in the U.S., according to sources, turning financing into the central issue for Korea Electric Power Corp. and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, the two names floated as buyers. Valuing Westinghouse at $30 billion (about 41 trillion won), even a 10% stake would require 4.1 trillion won in cash, while the capital increase for KEPCO outlined by the government amounts to at least 500 billion won drawn from a future response fund. A Westinghouse shareholder loses the right to nominate a director if its stake falls below 10%, and a 25% stake is needed to take part in core management decisions such as nuclear plant orders or the sale of business rights. Huh Yoon, a professor at Sogang University's Graduate School of International Studies, stressed that what matters is not the size of the stake but what authority it carries on the board. The government has pushed back its report to the National Assembly on the U.S. investment from the 17th to the 22nd.

2. Server DRAM Prices Jump 5.5-Fold Despite AI Slowdown Talk, Opening Era of 100 Trillion Won Quarterly Profit

- Key points: Behind the decision by executives at Samsung Electronics' semiconductor division to raise this year's operating profit outlook to as much as 370 trillion won is memory demand running ahead of market expectations. As of the 15th of this month, the fixed contract price for a DDR5 64GB server module (RDIMM) stood at $1,500, 5.5 times the $272 recorded a year earlier, and TrendForce projected that third-quarter contract prices for server DRAM would rise 13% to 18% from the previous quarter. In the second quarter, Samsung's semiconductor business alone posted revenue of 127.5 trillion won and operating profit of 89.2 trillion won, overtaking Nvidia for the top spot worldwide in operating profit. Its third-quarter operating profit is forecast at 107.4 trillion won. Its share of global DRAM revenue rose to 38% in the second quarter of this year from 33% in the third quarter of last year, while its share of high-bandwidth memory climbed 12 percentage points to 33% in the second quarter from 21% in the first.

3. Reuters: SK hynix, Intel Weigh Memory Production in U.S.

- Key points: Reuters reported on the 16th, citing multiple sources, that SK hynix is weighing as a leading option the leasing of part of Intel's chip production facility in Ohio to manufacture memory chips. Setting up a joint venture with memory customers such as major cloud companies is also said to be under discussion. SK hynix is spending about $4 billion (about 5.46 trillion won) to build a next-generation HBM advanced packaging plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, targeting mass production in the second half of 2029, but that is a back-end facility, so memory production in the U.S. would complete a production ecosystem spanning front-end to back-end processes. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said the plan could become subject to review under the Industrial Technology Protection Act if national core technology is involved, and SK hynix said nothing has been finalized.

4. Robotic Arms Take Over the Assembly Line: A Cell Charged in Nine Minutes, Made in Three Seconds

- Key points: The FinDreams Battery plant in Xiangyang, Hubei province, a battery unit of BYD, spans 85.6 hectares and employs more than 8,000 workers, yet its interior is filled with automated lines where robotic arms and automated guided vehicles do the work. With annual capacity of 30 gigawatt-hours, the plant is the main production base for the second-generation Blade battery BYD unveiled in March this year. Where the first generation took 33 minutes to charge from 10% to 80%, the second generation charges from 10% to 97% in nine minutes. A single line turns out 20,000 battery packs a day and produces one battery cell every three seconds, and the value of export output last year surged 165% from a year earlier, twice the 83.3% growth in BYD's overall battery exports. The Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade said China has secured a broad advantage over South Korea in value chain competitiveness across advanced manufacturing sectors such as electric vehicles, batteries and autonomous driving, warning that this could threaten Korean industry as a whole.

5. 'Without Physical AI, Korea's Manufacturing Strength Wavers': $1 Trillion Global Market to Open Within Seven Years

- Key points: With three mega projects covering semiconductors, physical AI and AI data centers now moving into execution, calls are growing to make physical AI, which combines artificial intelligence with robotics, the core engine of advanced manufacturing. Investment banking and global consulting data indicate that the world market for physical AI will grow at an average annual rate of 33%, from $80 billion in 2025 to $960 billion in 2033. That is a steeper increase than the global AI chip market, which is projected to expand from $53 billion to $300 billion over the same period. Park Hyeon-joo, chairman of Mirae Asset Group, said on the 16th that Korea would lose the initiative to China if it misses the moment, and proposed that the country consider building robotics clusters in cities such as Daegu. Also raised was the limitation that although Korea has one of the world's highest rates of robot adoption, its heavy reliance on foreign-made core components and robot manufacturing leaves it vulnerable to supply chain instability.

6. Kakao Moves to Win Over Minority Shareholders: 'Spin-Off Will Raise Corporate Value'

- Key points: Kakao (035720.KS), which is preparing a spin-off into Kakao AI and Kakao X, held an online briefing on the 16th to assure minority shareholders that corporate value will not be impaired after the split. The company said the move would maximize shareholder value by removing the conglomerate discount and enabling specialized decision-making for each business, adding that earlier domestic spin-offs delivered an average 32% improvement in shareholder value. Kakao X plans to use 30% of after-tax dividends from subsidiaries for baseline shareholder returns and to buy back and cancel a total of 300 billion won in treasury shares over the three years after the split, funded by gains from the sale of its Dunamu stake, while Kakao AI will direct 20% to 35% of its separate adjusted free cash flow to shareholder returns. Shin Jong-hwan, Kakao's chief financial officer, said the spin-off is not aimed at strengthening the largest shareholder's control and that its ownership ratio will remain the same as before the split.