Foreign investors are pulling away from Samsung Electronics. Over the past six months, they have sold more than 20 trillion won, causing their ownership proportion to fall below 50% for the first time since 2023.
According to the Korea Exchange on the 3rd, the foreign ownership ratio of Samsung Electronics is 49.99%. This marks the first time the foreign ownership proportion of Samsung Electronics has fallen below 50% since Jan. 12, 2023.
The drop in semiconductor demand and poor performance are interpreted as reasons why foreigners have been net sellers of Samsung Electronics. From September of last year to last month, foreigners sold 22.8886 trillion won worth of Samsung Electronics.
Samsung Electronics is facing challenges in all areas, including memory semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors, and foundry services. This is due to falling behind competitors.
A telling example of this is the launch of the 'Galaxy S25', which is equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite instead of Samsung's own semiconductor (AP), Exynos. In connection with this, No Tae-moon, head of Samsung Electronics' MX Business Division (president), noted, "It has been the principle since the Galaxy S1 to choose the best AP for Samsung Electronics' Galaxy."
Additionally, China's AI company 'Deepseek' is exacerbating the crisis for Samsung Electronics. Recently, Deepseek announced that it developed the AI model 'R1' while minimizing the use of low-cost, low-performance chips. For Samsung Electronics, which supplies high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for graphics processing units (GPUs) to several clients, a decrease in demand is expected to be a negative factor.
Deepseek stated that it spent $5.576 million (approximately 81 million won) developing R1. This is one-eighteenth of what OpenAI spent on 'ChatGPT.' Deepseek also mentioned that it used 'H800', which lags 30-40% behind OpenAI's high-performance chip 'H100' from Nvidia. The number of chips used was 2,048, one-eighth of the 16,000 used by OpenAI.
In relation to this, Samsung Electronics stated in a conference call on the 31st of last month, "The dynamics in the industry can always change due to the introduction of technology, and it is premature to make judgments with currently limited information." Nevertheless, it noted, "Long-term opportunities and short-term risk factors are expected to coexist in the market," and added, "We will keep an eye on industry trends to respond promptly to the rapidly changing AI market."
Meanwhile, in the securities sector, there is still a positive outlook for Samsung Electronics. Lee Jong-wook, a researcher at Samsung Securities, said, "If evidence emerges that Samsung Electronics has regained its technological competitiveness and a shareholder return program is initiated, there is a significant possibility that the stock price will recover in the first half of the year." He also analyzed, "Although the first quarter results may fall short of expectations, it is positive that the bottom of quarterly profits is confirmed."