KOSPI briefly surpassed the 5,000 mark, ushering in the "O-cheonpi" era, but the effective free float ratio of top market-cap corporations still remained around half. In particular, the free float share of listed affiliates of large corporate groups has decreased over the past three years.
According to Leaders Index on the 27th, the average effective free float ratio of last year for the top 300 corporations by market cap (266 actually surveyed) was 57.1%, down 0.2 percentage points from 57.3% in 2020, three years earlier.
During the same period, the total number of shares issued increased from 34,205,790,000 to 35,003,900,000, but the number of freely tradable shares rose only slightly from 21,750,140,000 to 21,937,730,000, causing the overall free float share to decline.
The treasury stock ratio edged down from 3.4% to 3.2%, but the equity share of major shareholders and related parties rose 0.4 percentage points from 39.3% to 39.7%.
Notably, the free float ratio of 148 listed companies belonging to large corporate groups fell 0.8 percentage points from 54.3% to 53.5% over the same period, four times the overall average decrease of 0.2 percentage points. In contrast, listed companies not affiliated with large corporate groups showed an increase, from 61.0% to 61.7%.
By corporation, the lowest free float ratio was Dongwon Industries (12.1%). Kyobo Securities (14.3%), Mirae Asset Life Insurance (15.1%), LG Energy Solution (18.2%), Gaon Cable (18.4%), and Samsung Card (20.2%) also remained below or barely above 20%.
The corporation with the largest drop in free float share was LS Marine Solution, plunging 34.6 percentage points over three years from 63.6% to 29.0%. During the same period, the treasury stock share declined slightly by 1.1 percentage points, but related parties absorbed most of this volume, sending their equity share surging from 31.2% to 66.8%.
On the other hand, corporations with high effective free float ratios included Hyulim Robot (92.9%), Woori Technology (91.5%), and Peptron (91.2%), while financial holding companies Shinhan Financial Group (91.1%) and Woori Financial Group (90.8%) also ranked near the top.
Leaders Index said, "Effective free float refers to shares free from the control of specific major shareholders and is a key indicator of market trust," noting, "The Korean stock market appears to be moving backward in terms of free float."