[Featured Stock] Lotte Shopping Surges Over 4% Intraday

[Asia Economy Reporter Minji Lee] Lotte Shopping is showing an intraday rise of over 4%.

At 10:11 AM on the 11th, Lotte Shopping was trading at 97,000 KRW, up 4.40% from the previous trading day. Currently, foreign investors' buying momentum is prominent. Foreigners have net purchased approximately 37,000 shares as of this time.

In the first quarter, Lotte Shopping's operating profit recorded 69 billion KRW, an 11.2% increase compared to the same period last year, but fell short of market expectations (118.5 billion KRW). It is analyzed that profitability declined due to acquisition tax of 17.7 billion KRW from a small-scale merger and poor performance of Lotte Himart (20 billion KRW).

Jinhyeop Lee, a researcher at Yuanta Securities, forecasted that Lotte Shopping may show performance improvement going forward. The researcher explained, "The business conditions of major divisions such as department stores and large marts, which had underperformed compared to competitors, are improving to competitor levels or surpassing them. The e-commerce sector is maintaining a deficit level but recording a growth rate better than the market. In the case of Culture Works, with the lifting of social distancing and the consecutive release of major films, performance improvement is occurring faster than initially expected."