SK Inc. will pay about $57 million in interim dividends, extending a nine-year streak as the holding company of one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates seeks to preserve investor confidence while restructuring a portfolio increasingly shaped by the global artificial-intelligence boom.
The company said it will distribute $1.05 for each common and preferred share. Shareholders registered as of Aug. 18 are scheduled to receive the payment on Aug. 31.
SK Inc. sits at the center of SK Group, whose businesses span semiconductors, telecommunications, energy and biotechnology. Its most internationally important affiliate is SK Hynix, one of the world’s largest memory-chip makers and a major supplier of high-bandwidth memory used in artificial-intelligence accelerators.
That semiconductor exposure gives SK Group an important position in the global AI supply chain, but SK Inc. did not attribute the latest dividend directly to the chip boom. The payment instead continues a shareholder-return policy introduced in 2018 and maintained every year since then.
SK Inc. has said regular midyear dividends are intended to make the timing and scale of shareholder returns more predictable. The policy also allows the holding company to signal that efforts to reorganize its investments and strengthen its finances will not come at the expense of cash distributions.
The company is pursuing portfolio rebalancing across a group that includes fast-growing semiconductor assets as well as more mature businesses in energy, chemicals and telecommunications. For investors, the dividend provides a measure of continuity as SK Inc. decides where to deploy capital and which assets should remain central to the group.
SK Inc. paid a total dividend of $5.55 a share last year, including a $1.05 interim payment and a $4.50 year-end dividend. The annual payout increased 14 percent from $4.80 a share a year earlier and placed the company among South Korea’s high-dividend companies.
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, who owns about 12.98 million SK Inc. shares, is expected to receive roughly $13 million before taxes from the latest payment. His 17.9 percent stake makes him the company’s largest individual shareholder.
Separately, the dividend is expected to add to Chey’s available cash as he prepares to pay about $660 million in a court-ordered property settlement to Roh Soh-yeong, director of the Art Center Nabi.
Market observers expect Chey to seek funding through a combination of existing cash, loans backed by his assets and possible sales of unlisted holdings while minimizing any disposal of his SK Inc.
shares, which are central to his control of the group. The dividend alone would cover only a small fraction of the settlement.
