[Young journalist Minkyeol Kim Eric] Samsung Electronics is reportedly planning to purchase KRW 90 trillion worth of treasury shares over the next three years to implement the agreement on special management performance bonuses with its labor union and the Performance Share Unit (PSU) program. This is more than three times the total amount of treasury shares purchased by Samsung Electronics over the past ten years (KRW 30.7 trillion) and is expected to be a major positive factor for the stock market as its main semiconductor (DS) division enters a supercycle.

According to the financial investment and electronics industries on the 24th, Samsung Electronics is expected to announce an additional treasury share purchase plan soon to provide special management performance bonuses for the DS division under the recent labor-management agreement and to secure shares for the PSU program introduced for all employees in October last year.

Samsung Electronics' operating profit this year, estimated by the securities market (based on KB Securities)is expected to reach KRW 375 trillion this year and KRW 548 trillion next year. The combined operating profit for the three years until 2028, when the semiconductor boom is expected to continue, is estimated at about KRW 1,471 trillion. Since labor and management agreed to use 10.5% of operating profit as the source of performance bonuses, the total amount of bonuses to be paid over the three years is expected to reach KRW 154 trillion. After withholding about 40% for taxes, the actual amount to be paid to employees in the form of shares is estimated to be about KRW 93 trillion.

In addition, the amount required for the PSU program, which was introduced in October last year to strengthen responsible management, has increased significantly because of the sharp rise in the stock price. As the stock price, which was around KRW 80,000 to KRW 90,000 when the program was introduced, has risen about 3.5 times to around KRW 310,000. The maximum payment multiple (200%) will be applied if the current stock price is maintained until the evaluation base date of October 2028. As a result, about 70.58 million shares, worth KRW 22 trillion, will need to be distributed to 128,000 employees.

As a result, Samsung Electronics will need nearly KRW 115 trillion worth of treasury shares to provide the special management performance bonuses and implement the PSU program. Even if the company uses all of its current treasury shares (82.09 million shares worth about KRW 25 trillion), it will still need to purchase at least KRW 89 trillion worth of additional shares from the market. This is equal to about 290 million shares, or 5% of the total number of outstanding common shares.

The market expects that this large-scale treasury share purchase will strongly support the stock price. In the past, Samsung Electronics' stock price increased every time the company carried out a large-scale treasury share purchase for shareholder returns. After announcing a KRW 9.3 trillion treasury share purchase in January 2017, the stock price rose 50.3% to KRW 57,000 in November, and the stock price soared 68.1% until the end of September 2025, when the purchase was worth KRW 10 trillion in November 2024.

In particular, the special management performance-based treasury stock to be paid this time can be sold immediately by only one-third, and the remaining two-thirds are subject to the condition of "lock-up", restricting trading for one and two years, respectively. It is expected that the large-scale demand for treasury shares will continue to support the stock market, while the distributed shares will remain locked up for a considerable period, reducing the number of shares available for trading and maximizing upward pressure on the stock price.

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