Samsung Shares Slump as Shareholder Return Plan Falls Short of Expectations

By Kwanwoo Jun

Samsung Electronics shares slumped Monday, after its largest-ever shareholder return plan fell short of market expectations.

Shares of the world's top memory-chip maker were down around 8% in afternoon trading, after falling as much as 9.4% to 255,000 won in the morning session, underperforming the benchmark Kospi's decline of around 3%.

Samsung said after the market closed on Friday that its board had approved a 2026 shareholder return program, estimated at approximately 90 trillion won to 110 trillion won, equivalent to $64.93 billion to $79.35 billion. The program is about five times the size of its previous record in 2020 and the largest ever by any Korean company.

The Samsung announcement, however, failed to impress investors, who had already set a much higher bar for the company.

Market expectations remain high for Samsung and other global semiconductor makers, which have reaped substantial gains from an artificial-intelligence boom. The boom is driving strong demand for chips crucial to the continuing AI infrastructure build-out.

Kyobo Securities analyst Choi Bo-young said Monday that investors had previously expected the South Korean tech giant to return up to 140 trillion won to shareholders this year and noted that Samsung provided few details on its plan to buy back and cancel shares.

Korean chipmaking rival SK Hynix earlier this month said that it would buy back and cancel about 40 trillion won of shares over the next three months. It also plans to increase shareholder returns to more than 50% of cumulative free cash flow for 2025-2027. Previously, the company had pledged to return up to 50%.

Samsung said its board had approved 30 trillion won in third-quarter cash dividends and 15 trillion won in a share buyback for employee compensation, with other shareholder-return details to come later.

Morgan Stanley analysts said that they expect Samsung to allocate 60 trillion won to 80 trillion won to share buybacks and cancellations this year. The shareholder returns are substantial but fall short of expectations, analysts led by Shawn Kim said in a note.

Despite what it called a "slightly disappointing" announcement from Samsung Electronics, Nomura maintained its buy rating on the stock and its 670,000 won target price.

"Still, it is a sizeable shareholder return compared to current market cap following its substantial amount of profit generation," Nomura analysts led by CW Chung said in a note.

Write to Kwanwoo Jun at kwanwoo.jun@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 24, 2026 01:50 ET (05:50 GMT)