NH Investment & Securities on the 3rd said SK Telecom is expected to see earnings recover this year and increase dividends. It especially saw valuation recovering as the No. 1 operator. It maintained a Buy rating and raised its target price to 81,000 won from 63,000 won. SK Telecom's closing price the previous day was 69,100 won.
Researcher An Jae-min at NH Investment & Securities said, "Putting the difficult 2025 behind due to the hacking incident, 2026 is expected to be a year of recovery."
At the same time, the firm forecast operating profit this year at 1.99 trillion won, up 85.4% from a year earlier. This would surpass 2024 results.
An said, "Valuation will also enter a normalization range," adding, "Subscribers lost during last year's business suspension period appear to have been regained to some extent during the competitor's penalty fee waiver period in January, and related to this, the uptrend in wireless business revenue is expected to continue from the second quarter."
However, the market's expectations for SK Telecom's higher dividends per share were assessed conservatively.
An said, "Equity that SK Telecom invested in to expand its artificial intelligence (AI) business, such as Anthropic and Chobi, can be sold at any time, but it has not yet been decided whether this will be reflected in dividends," adding, "Even excluding this, this year's dividend per share is estimated at 3,000 won."
Meanwhile, this year's dividends are expected to be addressed in detail at the earnings announcement on the 5th.