[Special Stock] Hankook Tire Rises on Positive Outlook for 'Second Half Earnings Improvement'

[Asia Economy Reporter Myung-hwan Lee] Hankook Tire & Technology is showing a strong gain of over 8% in the morning session on the 3rd. This is interpreted as a result of securities firms' forecasts that Hankook Tire's performance will improve in the second half of the year.

As of 10:22 a.m. on the day, Hankook Tire is trading at 38,400 KRW, up 7.87% (2,800 KRW) compared to the previous trading day.

Hankook Tire announced that its consolidated sales for the second quarter of this year increased by 12.9% year-on-year to 2.0399 trillion KRW. Operating profit for the same period decreased by 6.3% to 175.2 billion KRW. Operating profit rose 39% compared to the previous quarter. The company explained that despite the environment of rising raw material prices and global logistics disruptions, it achieved sales growth through expanding the proportion of high value-added products and effective sales price management.

Securities firms have a positive outlook on Hankook Tire's potential performance improvement in the second half of this year. They explained that the first half results have passed the bottom. Seon-jae Song, a researcher at Hana Securities, analyzed, "In the second half, major costs will stabilize, the effect of price increases will continue, and demand for original equipment (OE) tires will recover due to increased production by customers, leading to expected performance improvement," adding, "The current point, ahead of performance recovery, is an opportunity to increase weighting."