SEOUL, May 6 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of Samsung Electronics Co. shareholders under 20 years old has marked about a 90-fold increase over the past five years.
According to the data from the Korea Securities Depository, the number of underage shareholders at Samsung Electronics reached 115,083 as of the end of last year.
They accounted for 5.34 percent of the company’s shareholders, estimated at 2.1 million. The underage shareholders held a total of around 5.9 million shares, or 0.1 percent of the outstanding shares.
The combined value of the 5.9 million shares owned by the underage shareholders was estimated at 476.5 billion won as of the end of last year and 485.9 billion won (US$423 million) on the basis of the Tuesday’s closing price of KOSPI 200 stocks traded on the main Korea Stock Exchange.
The primary factor behind the surge in the number of shareholders in this age group is the improvement in accessibility to popular stocks, including Samsung Electronics, through stock splits.
The number of Samsung Electronics shareholders who are under 20 years old marked a 10-fold growth to 15,021 in 2018 when the company conducted stock splits, from 1,290 in late 2016.
Two years after the company’s stock splits, the number of such shareholders also registered spiked again by a factor of 10.
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