▲ AI PRISM* Personalized Economic Briefing
* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an AI-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six tailored news items by reader type.
[Key Issue Briefing]
■ Buyback Effect Vanishes: The U.S. Treasury announced it would double its bond buyback size to $4 billion per operation, but long-term yields returned to their starting point within 16 hours. Even though Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly floated the possibility of a further expansion, the market appears to be weighing fundamental concerns more heavily — the national debt topping $40 trillion and a prolonged war with Iran.
■ Samsung Shareholder-Return Megacycle: Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) held a board meeting and confirmed it would return up to 110 trillion won to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share buybacks and cancellations. Analysts say the scale of shareholder returns has swelled to a record high as cumulative free cash flow (FCF) has grown structurally amid the AI memory supercycle.
■ Anthropic Nears Listing: AI model developer Anthropic plans to publicly file its initial public offering (IPO) registration statement late this month. With management and existing investors valuing the company at $2 trillion after listing, attention is focused on whether it will break the record for the largest capital raise ever, set by SpaceX.
[News of Interest to Global Investors]
1. Treasury Buyback Rally Lasts Less Than a Day; Bessent Says Purchases Could Exceed $4 Billion
- Key summary: The effect of the U.S. Treasury's expanded bond buyback on lowering long-term yields lasted less than a day. Although Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a CNBC interview that purchases could exceed $4 billion per operation, the 30-year yield held around 5.25%, its highest level since 2007. Earlier, the 30-year yield had fallen to 5.17% immediately after the announcement before rebounding to 5.27%, while the 10-year yield, which had slipped to 4.63%, also jumped back into the 4.7% range, returning to pre-announcement levels. George Catrambone, head of fixed income at DWS Americas, said that given the size of the deficit and the crowding-out effect from AI, expanding the buyback was like throwing a tissue at a tsunami. The market's attention is turning to the Jackson Hole meeting on the 28th, where Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh is set to deliver the keynote address.
2. Dividend Expansion Enters a Megacycle; Profit Surge Points to 188 Trillion Won Next Year
- Key summary: Samsung Electronics confirmed a shareholder-return package worth up to 110 trillion won on the 21st, combining dividends and share buybacks and cancellations — five times the previous record of 20.3 trillion won set in 2020. Adding the 19.6 trillion won in regular dividends, 1.3 trillion won in special dividends and 8.4 trillion won in share buybacks and cancellations executed in 2024 and 2025, the three-year cumulative return reaches 120 trillion to 140 trillion won. The company plans to make an initial cash dividend payment of about 30 trillion won in the third quarter and to decide how to use the remaining 60 trillion to 80 trillion won once its results are finalized in January next year. Based on FnGuide data, next year's FCF is forecast to reach 376.1985 trillion won, so if the "return 50% of FCF" policy is maintained, the return pool would jump to about 188.1 trillion won next year and about 171.8 trillion won in 2028.
- Key summary: Anthropic will publicly file its listing registration statement late this month, challenging SpaceX's record for the largest IPO capital raise. In June, SpaceX raised $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation and ultimately secured $86.2 billion through the exercise of an over-allotment option, and estimates suggest Anthropic could also draw more than $75 billion to $80 billion. The basis for such expectations is revenue growth: second-quarter revenue surged 14.6-fold from a year earlier to $11.5 billion, and adjusted operating profit came in at $559 million, the first profit since the company's founding. Meanwhile, the fact that rival OpenAI abandoned a listing this year is also positive for Anthropic; OpenAI's operating loss, including stock-based compensation (SBC), widened from $9.3 billion in the first quarter to $12.3 billion in the second, with analysts saying its earnings held it back.
- Key summary: With the rebound in U.S. long-term yields coinciding with news of a planned future response fund, Korean treasury bond yields rose across the board on the 21st. In the Seoul bond market, the three-year yield closed at 3.854%, up 0.043 percentage points; the five-year at 4.111%, up 0.045 percentage points; and the 10-year at 4.376%, up 0.053 percentage points. The 10-year's relatively large gain was driven in part by stronger selling incentives among investors holding auction options, as market yields fell below the recent winning bid rate of 4.415%. Ahn Jae-kyun, a researcher at Korea Investment & Securities, explained that the rise in U.S. long-term yields was the trigger for the domestic weakness, compounded by news related to the future response fund.
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