010120 - LS ELECTRIC CO., LTD

Closed at 53% of the way from its 52-week low (₩54,600) to its 52-week high (₩318,500).

LS ELECTRIC sits one level down the grid from the transformer makers. Its core business is low and medium-voltage electrical equipment: circuit breakers, switchgear, contactors, distribution boards and the protective devices that sit inside buildings, factories and substations rather than on transmission towers. Around that it runs a factory automation business selling programmable controllers and drives, a power infrastructure arm that builds substations and grid projects as an engineering contractor, and a metals operation. It was spun out of the LS group's cable business, and it shares the group's exposure to copper prices, which flow through both its costs and its project pricing. The United States has become its fastest-growing market, where it sells switchgear and distribution equipment into data centre construction and grid upgrades from a plant in Texas, and where the shortage that made large power transformers scarce has spread down the voltage chain to the equipment LS ELECTRIC makes. For a US reader the nearest comparisons are Eaton's electrical segment, Schneider Electric or ABB's electrification business, though LS ELECTRIC is far smaller and much more concentrated in Korea and Asia.