Seoul shares up

Seoul shares ended slightly firmer on Monday with gains by energy and utility issues such as KEPCO and GS Holdings outweighing losses by key technology and auto exporters. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) ended up 0.21 percent at 1,415.16 points.
"A solid ending on Wall Street and better-than-expected job data helped sentiment, but gains were limited with institutions offloading as fund redemptions rise and pension funds cash out of some of their stock holdings," said Kim Seong-bong, a market analyst at Samsung Securities. News that US employers cut a smaller-than-expected 539,000 jobs in April lent the market support.
Institutions were net sellers for a fifth straight session, offloading a net 460 billion won worth of stocks. Investment management firms sold a net 400 net billion won and pension funds were sellers of a net 25 billion won. "A stronger won helped utilities issues as they're big importers of crude oil and natural gas and tend to have heavy foreign currency debt loads, but also pressures exporters," Kim added.
Analysts also said caution ahead of the Bank of Korea's interest rate meeting on Tuesday weighed on sentiment. Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO) ended up 3.78 percent, further helped by a report the government was considering raising electricity tariffs to mitigate the state-run utility's chronic losses. "If a rate hike does happen, it would directly contribute to KEPCO's earnings," said Lee Jae-won, an analyst at SK Securities.
Meanwhile GS Holdings finished up 4.43 percent after the holding firm of GS Caltex, South Korea's No 2 crude refiner, said its first quarter net profit jumped 1,420 percent year-on-year. "GS Caltex's earnings came out very strong on the back of a rebound in crude refining margins and improvements in margins from petrochemical products," Woori Investment & Securities said on its report on Monday.
But key technology and auto exporters declined on the back of continuing strengthening of the won. Samsung Electronics, the world's No 1 memory chip maker, which accounts for more than 10 percent of the KOSPI's market cap, fell 1.05 percent. Samsung Electronics said Monday it expected shipments of computer memory chips to grow by 10 to 15 percent this year, much lower than a previous estimate made late last year. Hyundai Motor, the country's No 2 automaker, declined 0.92 percent.
Elsewhere shares in online game developer NCSoft fell 0.32 percent despite posting on Monday 315 percent year-on-year growth in first quarter net profit to 33.5 billion won ($27.12 million). Advancers led decliners 478 to 329, with 86 unchanged. Trading volume stood at 668.4 million shares worth 6.9 trillion won compared with 705.8 million shares worth 7.3 trillion on Friday. The KOSPI 200 June futures index ended 0.15 points higher at 181.40, and the KOSPI 200 spot index rose 0.31 points to 181.35. The junior Kosdaq market rose 1.17 percent to end at 523.91 points.