Seoul: South Korean companies reported improved overall growth and profitability in the third quarter, driven by robust semiconductor exports amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, the central bank said Wednesday. The combined sales of 26,067 companies subject to external audits rose 2.1 percent from a year earlier in the July-September period, reversing a 0.7 percent on-year decline in the second quarter, according to data from the Bank of Korea (BOK).
According to Yonhap News Agency, the increase in sales was fueled by rising exports of high value-added products, such as HBM and DDR5, amid expanding global AI investment, along with higher memory prices. Moon Sang-yoon, chief of the BOK's corporate statistics team, highlighted this trend during a press briefing. Sales growth in the machinery and electrical and electronics industries jumped 8.9 percent, more than quadrupling from 2.2 percent in the previous quarter. Excluding these industries, the sales growth rate stood at around 1.1 percent.
The strong performance by several large e-commerce retailers, increased sales of imported electric vehicles, and solid earnings at digital platform companies also contributed to the upturn, Moon added. Profitability indicators showed positive trends as well, with the operating profit margin of the surveyed companies standing at 6.1 percent in the third quarter, up from 5.8 percent a year earlier.
Financial stability indicators strengthened, evidenced by a decline in the debt-to-equity ratio to 88.8 percent in the third quarter from 89.8 percent in the second quarter, while companies' reliance on borrowing fell 0.4 percentage point to 26.2 percent. Moon noted that negative effects from new U.S. tariffs persisted into the third quarter, but uncertainty has largely eased, and the robust performance of the semiconductor industry helped offset the impact.