NH Investment & Securities said on the 19th that SK Telecom will see both an earnings recovery and a normalization of shareholder returns this year. It maintained its "buy (BUY)" rating and raised the target price to 100,000 won from 81,000 won. SK Telecom's previous trading day closing price was 79,700 won.
An Jae-min, a researcher at NH Investment & Securities, said, "With 5G investment execution past its peak, the slowdown in revenue caused by last year's subscriber churn and the temporarily intensified marketing competition will come to an end," adding, "In addition, reflecting the labor cost savings from SK Broadband's voluntary retirement, the weak results in 2025 will enter a gradual recovery starting in 2026."
An projected SK Telecom's revenue this year at 17.7 trillion won and operating profit at 1.98 trillion won. Those represent increases of 3.4% and 84.5%, respectively, from a year earlier.
He also noted the potential for expanded shareholder returns. An said, "Given global telecom companies' share repurchase stance, the earnings recovery, and the sharply reduced dividends in 2025, there is room for share repurchases in 2026," adding, "The dividend per share will recover to about 3,200 won (dividend yield of about 4%)."
In particular, attention was also drawn to the transfer of 1.7 trillion won in capital surplus to retained earnings, which will be submitted as an agenda item at the March 2026 shareholders meeting. An explained, "This will make reduced-par dividends possible from 2027, and the actual dividends returned to shareholders will increase due to tax savings."
He also assessed the value of the artificial intelligence (AI) business positively. He added, "SK Telecom is emerging as a full-stack operator by building an all-around AI value chain, including data centers (IDC), GPU infrastructure, and its own large language model (LLM)," and "its equity in Anthropic, among others, also has various potential uses going forward."