National Pension Service (NPS), South Korea’s largest institutional investor, has earned 23.4 trillion won ($20.7 billion) in profits from local stocks so far this year.

The results came from a study released by Maeil Business Newspaper on Friday on 271 stocks in which NPS owned a stake of more than 5 percent as of last year. The profits gained from the beginning of the year until Oct. 18 amounted to 23.4 trillion won, four times larger than last year’s 5.34 trillion won.

Samsung Electronics Co. is seen to have delivered 12.2 trillion won in profits, accounting for the largest share at 52 percent. NPS reportedly held 23.4 trillion won of the chipmaker’s shares last year but its present value has jumped to over 35 trillion won on soaring stock prices driven by a semiconductor boom.

The second-most profitable stock was SK Hynix Inc., the world’s second-largest DRAM maker after Samsung, bringing NPS an estimated profit of 2.62 trillion won with a yield of nearly 81 percent, more than 30 percentage points higher than that of its bigger rival.

Other profitable stocks include LG Chem Ltd. (761.7 billion won), POSCO (743.3 billion won), KB Financial Group Inc. (584.9 billion won), NCSoft Corp. (566.5 billion won), SK Innovation Co. (532.1 billion won) and Samsung SDI Co. (512.4 billion won).

The top 10 profitable stocks made up 82.9 percent of the pension fund operator’s profits, with a rate of return averaging 24.3 percent. Out of more than 2,000 stocks on the Korean stock market, nearly all of the profits came from the major 30 stocks.

NPS also raked in about 20 trillion won from foreign stocks, bonds and alternative investments, which would push its estimated profits this year to a total of 40 trillion won.

By Choi Jae-won and Kim Hyo-jin

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]