HD Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (KRX:329180) has never had this many open files at once. Since July 10 it has filed four serious-accident disclosures. Three labour offices have issued partial stoppage orders that are still in force. The whole company stopped for four days at the end of July. The union began rolling partial strikes on September 2. And the Korea Exchange is waiting for an answer by September 18. It wants to know whether the group will buy a US shipyard.
Each of these has been written about on its own. This piece puts them on one page. It holds them against the one thing that doesn't move. That is the delivery dates in the order book. My view is that the yard's revenue is safe in total but not in timing, and that timing is now the whole question.
Here is the stack as it stood on Friday.
The accident disclosures are dated July 10, July 20, July 27 and August 31. The last one covers a worker found collapsed in a boiler room on August 28. The company says it does not yet know the cause. It isn't sure the death even counts as a serious accident under Korean law. It will amend the filing if the investigation says otherwise. Press counts put the 2026 total at six deaths across HD Hyundai sites. They include a submarine fire in April that predates the July run.
The stoppage orders came from two different labour offices. Ulsan banned gondola work on July 19. Gunsan stopped the entire panel-factory assembly line on July 25. Ulsan then banned every A-frame ladder on the site on August 30. None of the filings I've read say any of these has been lifted.
The company-wide halt ran from July 29 to August 1. The filing scored the affected operations at ₩17.58tn, which is all of FY2025 revenue.
The strike is new. Wage talks collapsed on September 1 after the eighteenth bargaining session. The union began a seven-hour partial strike on September 2. It plans to rotate partial strikes through different areas of the yard until September 10. A four-hour strike for all members is set for September 15. The union wants a ₩149,600 monthly base increase. It also wants a 100-point rise in the bonus. It wants profit sharing equal to 30% of operating profit. The company offered ₩105,000 including seniority steps, a ₩10m lump sum and a 200% bonus.
The US shipyard review sits on top. The exchange asked on August 21 whether the group had narrowed its US targets. The company said the HD Hyundai group is reviewing acquisitions of and stakes in US yards. Nothing is decided. The company said it will re-disclose by September 18. Trade press says the group has lined up Cerberus Capital and the Korea Development Bank as partners. It also says US rules set an ownership requirement for a foreign builder. The builder must hold at least half of a US yard before it can build warships there.
The company filed its monthly investor letter on August 27. It gives the first hard number on what the summer cost. July revenue was ₩2,075.9bn. That is 41.8% above July 2025, which is the cycle working as expected. But it is 9.0% below June's ₩2,280.8bn.
July contained three of the four halt days, the gondola ban and the Gunsan line stoppage. The filing doesn't attribute the monthly drop to any of them, and I can't either. Some of the swing is ordinary month-to-month noise. This business recognises revenue on construction progress. But a 9% fall from June in a yard that had been growing every month is the direction you'd expect.
The year-to-date figure is still strong. Revenue for January through July was ₩14,288.7bn, up 51.5% on the same seven months of 2025. Second-quarter revenue alone was ₩6,332.2bn. That works out to about ₩69.6bn per calendar day. That is the number to hold onto. Each day the yard doesn't run costs roughly that much in revenue recognised later rather than now.
The same monthly letter puts cumulative orders through July at $15,973m. That is up 88.8% on a year earlier. Shipbuilding orders alone were $13,051m, up 124.7%. Engine and machinery added $2,809m.
Every one of those contracts carries a delivery date. The four LPG carriers signed on August 21 deliver by March 2030. The six LNG-fuelled container ships from Ocean Network Express deliver between November 2028 and September 2030. Ships ordered in 2026 are slotted into berths that were already planned around ships ordered in 2024 and 2025.
That is why lost days matter more than the revenue arithmetic suggests. The revenue itself is deferred, not lost. A hull that is 40% complete in July and 42% complete in August still gets finished. But the berth schedule is a chain. A hull that leaves the dock late holds up the one behind it. The filings I've read don't disclose late-delivery penalty terms, and I won't guess at them. What I can say is that the cushion between planned and contractual delivery is what absorbs a stoppage, and nobody outside the company knows how much cushion is left after a summer like this one.
The strike adds hours to that same ledger. Seven hours on September 2, then rotating partial strikes, then four hours for every member on September 15. None of these is a full stoppage. All of them are subtractions from a schedule that was already tight.
The company's market capitalisation was ₩45.8 trillion at Friday's close of ₩436,500. The shares are 41% below the 52-week high of ₩745,000. First-half operating income was ₩1,945.3bn on revenue of ₩12,248.5bn, a 15.9% margin. Annualise that and the market is paying about 11.8 times operating income.
That multiple was set when the yard was running clean. The margin in it comes from contracts priced in 2023 and 2024, which an earlier piece here covered. The market hasn't priced whether the 2026 schedule slips. It can't yet.
The US yard is the other unknown. The exchange reply refers to the HD Hyundai group, not to this listed company. The group may buy a US yard. It isn't clear which entity would own it or fund it. The listed company held ₩4,550.9bn of cash at June 30. A US acquisition funded from here would change the capital allocation picture that another earlier piece described. The September 18 re-disclosure may settle the entity question or may defer it again.
The other side of the argument is worth taking seriously.
Stoppage orders in Korea are usually narrow. A gondola ban, a ladder ban and one assembly line are not the same as a closed yard. The July revenue drop of 9% is consistent with a partial rather than a total effect. If the labour offices lift the orders this month, the schedule pressure eases quickly.
Partial strikes at Korean yards are also routine in wage season. The union's demand for 30% profit sharing is an opening position. A settlement by mid-September would remove the strike from the ledger entirely.
Revenue recognised on progress is also forgiving. The yard can partly recover days lost in Q3 with overtime in Q4. That costs margin rather than revenue. The 16% margin has room to absorb some of that.
And the cycle is still strong. Orders up 88.8% year to date is not a company losing customers. Shipowners ordering LNG carriers have few other places to go.
Two dates settle most of this. September 15 is the all-member strike. If it goes ahead, the wage dispute has moved past the rotating phase. The schedule then loses a full shift. If it is called off, a settlement is close.
September 18 is the US shipyard re-disclosure. The answer to watch for is not whether the group buys a yard. It is which entity signs the cheque.
After those comes the next monthly IR letter, due in late September. It will show August revenue. August contained one halt day, the ladder ban and the fourth accident. If August comes in below July's ₩2,075.9bn, the summer's cost is compounding. If it recovers toward June's ₩2,280.8bn, the yard has found its cushion.
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