(image: KobizMedia/ Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, Dec. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — Interim or quarterly dividend payments by South Korea’s listed firms grew slightly from a year earlier this year largely helped by massive payouts by market kingpin Samsung Electronics, data showed Sunday.
As of last week, 58 listed companies have paid a combined 9.32 trillion won (US$7.95 billion) in interim dividends to their shareholders, according to the data from the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).
The number of dividend-paying firms rose by four from a year earlier, while their combined interim or quarterly dividend payouts rose by about 200 billion won over the cited period.
Interim and quarterly dividend payouts by local firms have been on the rise since 2017, when the amount more than quadrupled to 4.65 trillion won from 954 billion won the year before.
The increase, however, was largely attributed to payouts by Samsung Electronics, the single largest business entity here by both sales and market capitalization.
Interim and quarterly dividend payouts by Samsung jumped from some 142 billion won in 2016 to 2.89 trillion won in 2017 and 7.21 trillion won last year.
This year, Samsung again paid 7.21 trillion won in interim and quarterly dividends, accounting for 77.4 percent of the total interim dividend payouts.
So far, 1,093 out of the total 2,083 listed companies here have introduced interim or quarterly dividend payout systems, up 55 from a year earlier, according to the FSS.
However, only 5.3 percent of those with such systems have actually made interim or quarterly dividend payments to their shareholders.
(Yonhap)
