14.23 Million Stockholders Last Year... Samsung Electronics Holds the Most Shares

As of December last year, the number of shareholders of listed companies with December fiscal year-end was estimated to be about 14.23 million, of which about one-third were shareholders of Samsung Electronics.

According to the Korea Securities Depository on the 17th, the number of shareholders of 2,687 listed companies with December fiscal year-end last year was counted at 14,226,381, an increase of 0.5% compared to the previous year. The average number of stocks owned per person was 5.79, and the average number of shares owned was 8,207.

AFP Yonhap News

By type of owner, individuals accounted for about 14.1 million (99.1%), overwhelmingly the majority. The number of shares owned by individuals was also the highest at 58 billion shares (49.6%). Corporations followed with 44.3 billion shares (37.9%), and foreigners with 13.9 billion shares (11.9%). However, foreigners had the highest average number of stocks owned at 9.79, and corporations ranked first with an average of 790,000 shares owned per entity.

In the KOSPI market, corporations owned the largest number of shares at 27.5 billion shares (44.8%), followed by individuals with 22.5 billion shares (36.6%) and foreigners with 11.5 billion shares (18.6%). On the other hand, in the KOSDAQ and KONEX markets, individuals accounted for the majority with 34.8 billion shares (65.0%) and 642 million shares (62.5%), respectively.

By stock, Samsung Electronics had the largest number of shareholders at about 5.67 million, an increase of 8.7% compared to the previous year. Following were Kakao (1.69 million) and Naver (910,000), ranking high. In the KOSDAQ market, EcoPro BM had the largest number of shareholders at about 550,000, followed by EcoPro (440,000) and Kakao Games (240,000).

The number of companies where foreigners owned more than 50% of the total shares was 32, down by two from the previous year. In the KOSPI market, Dongyang Life Insurance had the highest foreign ownership ratio at 82.7%, followed closely by KB Financial Group (73.7%) and S-OIL (72.7%). In the KOSDAQ market, Korea Investors Service led with 79.7%, followed by Classys (74.7%) and TCK (70.4%) in terms of foreign ownership ratio.

By individual age group, those in their 50s were the largest with 3.16 million people (22.4%) and 20.1 billion shares (34.6%). Among individual shareholders, males accounted for 7.32 million (51.9%) and females 6.78 million (48.1%), while the number of shares owned was 41.6 billion shares (71.8%) for males and 16.4 billion shares (28.2%) for females. By region, Gyeonggi-do had the highest number of shareholders at 3.7 million (26.4%), while the smallest was Sejong Special Self-Governing City with about 114,000 (0.8%). In terms of the ratio of shareholders to population and number of shares owned, Seoul ranked first with 36.6% and 51.1 billion shares (50%), respectively.