IR innovator of the year
Hana Financial Group
Hana Financial Group has unveiled an aggressive plan to boost its corporate value, vowing stronger shareholder returns and a business overhaul aimed at breaking free from its chronic undervaluation.
The group’s core target is to lift its price-to-book ratio above 1.0 — a symbolic threshold that indicates a company is valued fairly relative to its assets. A PBR below 1.0 suggests a stock trades at a discount, and Hana says it intends to correct that by demonstrating clearer, sustainable growth to investors.
As part of the push, Hana pledged to raise its total shareholder return ratio to 50 percent by 2027, meaning half of its net profit will flow back to investors through dividends and share buybacks.
The group’s stock rose more than 30 percent in 2024 — its strongest annualized gain in three years — after steadily raising shareholder returns from 26 percent in 2021 to 38 percent this year. Still, the figure lags far behind global peers, many of which routinely return 70 to 80 percent of earnings.
To close the gap, Chairman Ham Young-joo announced a key shift: Starting next year, Hana will adopt fixed annual cash dividends and equal quarterly payouts to give investors greater visibility on returns. Share buybacks and cancellations will also increase, shrinking the total share count and boosting per-share value.
Ham stressed that higher dividends must rest on a stronger profit engine. “The core of our value-up strategy is efficient capital use and a sustainable profit structure,” he said, highlighting plans to expand nonbank businesses such as securities and insurance. The goal is to lift the nonbank contribution to 30 percent of total revenue across the group’s 14 subsidiaries.
To make payouts sustainable, Hana also committed to strict capital discipline. The group will keep the growth of risk-weighted assets in line with Korea’s economic pace and maintain its key capital buffer — the CET1 ratio — between 13.0 and 13.5 percent.
The market has already responded favorably. Hana’s shares have surged 63.4 percent this year, rising from 56,800 won at the end of 2023 to 92,800 won on Tuesday, the steepest gain among major Korean financial holding firms, underscoring investor confidence in its value-up drive.
