[Newsmp] Pharmaceutical stocks remain struggling through march.
According to the Korea Exchange, out of the 47 stocks in the KOSPI pharmaceutical index, 38 stocks' prices decreased in March. Only nine stocks saw an increase in their prices over the same period.
Although 80% of the constituent stocks in the pharmaceutical index saw a decline in their prices, the price fluctuations decreased significantly for each stock.
During this period, only four stocks recorded a double-digit decline, including BioNote (-14.0%), Daewoong (-11.3%), Gene One Life Science (-11.2%), and Samil Pharmaceutical (-10.7%), and the drop did not exceed 15%.
Furthermore, the stock prices of 22 constituent stocks of the pharmaceutical index, including Daewoong Pharmaceutical, Il-Yang Pharmaceutical, Yungjin Pharm., Dong Wha Pharm, Il Dong Pharmaceutical, Korea United Pharm., Shin Poong Pharmaceutical, Orient Bio, Myungmoon Pharmaceutical, Chong Kun Dang Holdings, Samjin Pharmaceutical, Il Dong Holdings, Daewon Pharmaceutical, Reyon Pharmaceutical, Pharmicell, and Kyongbo Pharmaceutical, which account for nearly half of the constituent stocks, dropped by more than 5%.
While only two out of the nine stocks that rose in the same period recorded double-digit increases in stock prices, including Ilsung Pharmaceuticals (+22.6%) and HanAll Biopharma (+17.9%), all of them exceeded a 15% increase. However, other stocks did not rise more than 5%.
Although there were few stocks that recorded gains, the combined market capitalization of the 47 stocks in the index increased slightly from KRW 105.8562 trillion to KRW 106.8195 trillion as the stock prices of Samsung Biologics and Celltrion, ranked first and second in market cap in the index, rose in parallel.
Samsung Biologics saw its market capitalization grow by KRW 1.676 trillion, and Celltrion's by KRW 647.8 billion during the period, while SK Bioscience and HanAll BioPharma also expanded by over KRW 100 billion.
However, the market value of four companies, Yuhan Corporation, Daewoong Pharmaceutical, Daewoong, and BioNote, decreased by over KRW 100 billion.
Samsung Biologics had the largest market capitalization as of the end of March, at KRW 56.851 trillion, followed by Celltrion at KRW 21.948 trillion, SK Bioscience at KRW 5.361 trillion, Yuhan Corporation at KRW 3.779 trillion, Hanmi Pharmaceutical at KRW 3.159 trillion, Green Cross at KRW 1.269 trillion, and Daewoong Pharmaceutical exceeded KRW 1 trillion with KRW 1.189 trillion.
As Shin Poong Pharmaceutical stepped back from the KRW 1 trillion mark to KRW 954.3 billion, the number of pharmaceutical stocks with a market capitalization of over KRW 1 trillion decreased from eight at the end of February to seven at the end of March.
