Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) was the domestic stock most frequently gifted by parents to their minor children last month, accounting for more than half of all such stock gifts.
KB Securities analyzed stocks that its customers gifted to children aged 18 and under through its "Stock Gifting" service and found that Samsung Electronics ranked first by transaction volume, the brokerage said Wednesday.
The stock gifting service allows customers to transfer shares through a brokerage's home trading system (HTS) or mobile trading system (MTS). Users can select shares they hold and send them by entering the recipient's name and mobile phone number.
Samsung Electronics gifts accounted for 56.3% of all domestic stock gifts to minors among KB Securities customers last month. Analysts attribute the trend to growing expectations for Samsung Electronics' earnings growth, driven by rising memory chip prices amid surging artificial intelligence (AI) demand. The relatively low per-share price compared with other large-cap semiconductor stocks also reduced the burden of gifting, spurring buying interest.
The market considers Samsung Electronics the top pick among semiconductor stocks. "With AI demand expanding, we expect Samsung Electronics to recover its share in the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market and note that it has secured the largest production capacity (CAPA) among competitors," said Lee Jong-wook, an analyst at Samsung Securities.
Kia (000270.KS) ranked second, accounting for 6.5% of domestic stock gifts to minors. The automaker posted solid sales despite a global slowdown in new vehicle demand, while benefiting from the surge in the won-dollar exchange rate and gaining momentum from its robotics business.
Kakao (035720.KS) followed with 6.1%, trailed by HLB (028300.KQ) at 3.7%, Ecopro BM (247540.KQ) at 3.6%, Duksan Techopia (317330.KQ) at 3.0%, DS Dansuk (017860.KS) at 2.5%, and POSCO Holdings (005490.KS) at 2.1%.
SK hynix (000660.KS), another leading Korean semiconductor stock, accounted for just 1.5% of gifts. With its current share price exceeding 1.4 million won ($1,030), buyers appeared to find it burdensome. Meanwhile, all of the top 10 most-gifted domestic stocks posted positive returns last month.
Performance against the KOSPI, however, was mixed. SK hynix posted the largest monthly gain at 59.4%, followed by POSCO Holdings at 39.0% and Samsung Electronics at 31.9%. All three outperformed the KOSPI's monthly return of 30.6%.
By contrast, Duksan Techopia (29.2%), DS Dansuk (23.7%), HLB (20.2%), Kia (4.6%), Naver (035420.KS) (4.7%), Ecopro BM (7.2%), and Kakao (3.3%) underperformed the KOSPI.
