The Korea Exchange plans to select outstanding value-up corporations every May starting this year and announced related standards on the 11th. It aims to provide eight incentives to the awarded corporations to encourage listed companies to participate in the value-up program and thereby spread the value-up corporate culture.
The selection criteria for outstanding value-up corporations are businesses that have publicly disclosed plans to enhance corporate value from January to December of the previous year among those listed on the securities market and Korea Securities Dealers Automated Quotations. However, this year, it will also include businesses that disclosed their plans from March considering the corporate value enhancement plans that began in May of last year. Newly listed items or corporations with recent outstanding value-up recognition records will be excluded from the evaluation.
The evaluation will proceed in three stages: a quantitative evaluation, a qualitative evaluation, and a comprehensive evaluation. In the first quantitative evaluation, criteria such as total shareholder return (TSR), price to book ratio (PBR), and return on equity (ROE) will be assessed, and companies with governance ratings below certain standards will be excluded at this stage.
The qualitative evaluation examines the thoroughness of the corporate value enhancement plans and the efforts made. Ultimately, in the comprehensive evaluation conducted at the end, the scores from the previous stages and the results, plans, and negative issues related to corporate value enhancement will all be considered to determine the outstanding companies.
The Exchange will select and announce the first 10 outstanding value-up corporations in May this year based on these criteria. Corporations selected as outstanding value-up corporations will receive eight incentives, including preferential treatment in selecting exemplary taxpayers, pre-examination for research and development (R&D) expense deductions, corporate tax reductions, and succession consulting.
In addition, they can benefit from the exemption of annual fees from the Exchange, additional exemptions of listing fees, suspension of fines or sanctions due to inadequate disclosures, priority participation in joint investment presentations, and preferential benefits when included in the 'Korea Value-up Index.'