BriefZip

When Samsung SDS announced on November 2, 2026 that it had started building an AI data center in Gumi, an industrial city in southeastern South Korea, the company gave both the site area and the power capacity. The initial power capacity is 60 megawatts , and the design allows expansion in stages to 120 megawatts. Here is why AI data centers are described in megawatts, and what that number really means. The Samsung SDS project Samsung SDS is the IT services company of the Samsung group. Its Gumi data center sits on roughly 46,000 square meters of land and is built for power-hungry AI and GPU servers. Construction began after the city approved it in late August, and completion is planned for the end of 2028. Besides running its own GPUs, the company will offer colocation, where customers bring their own servers or GPUs and rent space, power and cooling. Samsung SDS described the project as the first result of the Samsung group's plan, announced in July, to invest about 60 trilli...

POSCO Holdings, the holding company of South Korea's largest steelmaker, reported a preliminary third-quarter operating profit of 945 billion won (about $705 million) on November 2, 2026, up 47.9% from a year earlier and 15.3% from the previous quarter. The gain came almost entirely from steel. Its battery materials business, built around lithium, swung back to an operating loss. All won figures below are converted at about 1,341 won per US dollar, the rate shown on the afternoon of November 2 (Korea time). The headline numbers On a consolidated basis, revenue was 19.14 trillion won (about $14.3 billion), down 0.6% from the second quarter. Operating profit rose to 945 billion won from 819 billion won, lifting the operating margin from 4.3% to 4.9%. Net profit was 380 billion won (about $283 million), roughly half of the second quarter's 761 billion won. The second quarter had been boosted by a one-off gain of 392 billion won from selling two stainless steel subsidiaries i...

South Korea's main stock index, the KOSPI, climbed 2.24% on Monday, November 2, 2026, the first trading day of the month. Steelmaker POSCO Holdings reported a 48% jump in preliminary third-quarter operating profit, SK Square raised its shareholder payout target, Samsung SDS started building an AI data center, and the plan to shorten Korea's stock settlement cycle was pushed back by about a year. All won amounts are converted at about 1,341 won per US dollar, the rate shown on the afternoon of November 2 (Korea time). KOSPI closes up 2.24% at 5,859 The KOSPI, an index of stocks listed on Korea's main board, closed at 5,859.08, up 128.34 points. The KOSDAQ, Korea's junior market with many smaller tech and biotech firms, rose 1.37% to 734.33. The KOSPI opened more than 1% lower but turned higher during the morning session. Domestic institutions bought a net 1.84 trillion won (about $1.4 billion) of KOSPI shares, while individual investors and foreign investors were...

Korea Exchange (KRX), the operator of South Korea's stock market, has published its first-ever list of "low-PBR" companies: 151 listed firms whose shares have traded far below their book value for years. The list went live on November 2, 2026 and will stay up until May 3, 2027. The average price-to-book ratio of the companies on it is about 0.25x , while the average for all Korean listed companies is about 1.8x. The move is part of Korea's push to fix the so-called "Korea discount," the long-running gap between the valuations of Korean companies and their peers in other developed markets. This post explains what PBR is, how the list was built, which well-known names made it, and what happens next. What is PBR? The price-to-book ratio (PBR) compares a company's share price with its book value per share. For the company as a whole, it is market capitalization divided by net assets. Net assets, or book value, are what remains on the balance sheet after...