S.Korean stock issuance volume declines 24% in 2022

The volume of stock issuance in South Korea declined sharply last year due to the softening stock market. Amid rising interest rates, the amount of corporate bond issues also showed a weakening trend.

According to the "2022 direct financing performance of corporations" published by the Financial Supervisory Service on Wednesday, the amount of public offering of stocks and corporate bonds was 204.5 trillion won ($165.7 billion) , down by 26,904.6 billion won (11.6%) from the previous year.

The amount of stocks issued was 21,940.8 billion won, down by 7,149.5 billion won (24.6%) from the previous year, as both IPOs and paid-in capital increases declined due to poor performance in the stock market.

The number of IPOs was up slightly from 110 to 115, but the volume of public offerings fell by 8.1% from 14,522.5 billion won to 13,351.5 billion won.

As for the paid-in capital increase, it declined by 41.0% to 8,589.3 billion won while the number of cases also was down significantly from 89 to 59 cases.

"As the stock market continued to weaken, both the number and amount of paid-in capital increase by Kospi-listed companies decreased by half compared to the previous year," explained a Financial Supervisory Service official.

Corporate bond issuance amounted to 182,633.9 billion won, down by 19,755.1 billion won (9.8%) from the previous year, as bond issuance conditions have gotten worse in the wake of the global rate hike and the subsequent rate increase by the Bank of Korea.

Write to Dong-Hun Lee at leedh@hankyung.com