NH Investment & Securities said in a regulatory filing on the 23rd that its first-quarter operating profit rose 120.3% from a year earlier to 636.7 billion won. Net income climbed 128.5% to 475.7 billion won, the company’s highest quarterly result on record. Annualized return on equity was 19.6%.
Brokerage and financial products led the gains. Brokerage benefited from a surge in trading on South Korea’s stock market. First-quarter brokerage commission revenue jumped 57.4% from the previous quarter to 349.5 billion won. Domestic stock entrusted assets totaled 316 trillion won and contract value reached 850 trillion won, up 17.6% and 91.4%, respectively, from the prior quarter.
Market share rose 0.5 percentage point to 10.7%, the company said, citing a jump in average daily trading value for domestic stocks to 66.8 trillion won, up 80.5% from the previous quarter.
Fees from selling financial products rose 87.7% to 49.1 billion won as sales of investment products such as wrap accounts and funds increased. Total financial product assets were 173 trillion won, unchanged from the previous quarter. The number of high-net-worth clients rose to 358,000 with at least 100 million won and 24,000 with at least 1 billion won, up 15.2% and 13.6%.
In investment banking, quarterly fee revenue was 97.2 billion won. The firm kept the top spot in equity capital markets underwriting with a 30.9% share and ranked first in IPO underwriting with a 37.4% share. It also maintained an industry-leading 32.0% share as lead manager for credit card and other specialty finance bonds, it said, and completed large deals including IPOs for K Bank and Inventera and refinancing for a collateralized loan tied to the Seoul International Finance Center, or SIFC.
In the investment management business, investment gains and related net interest income rose 21.5% from the previous quarter to 424.2 billion won. The company reported 243.0 billion won in investment gains and 181.2 billion won in related net interest income, citing strategic asset allocation despite rising interest rates. Net interest income tied to wealth management rose 8.1% to 127.4 billion won on higher average customer deposits and average securities lending balances.
Chief Executive Officer Yoon Byeong-woon said the record quarter reflected broad-based growth across the company. “We will foster IMA as a new core growth engine, while working to ensure the capital market can contribute to real-economy growth through productive finance,” Yoon said.
He added that the company would strengthen enterprise-wide risk management amid uncertainty, including Middle East-driven geopolitical risks and greater volatility in interest rates and exchange rates, and “establish ourselves as a securities firm trusted by both shareholders and customers.”
* This article has been translated by AI.
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