[Edaily Reporter Kwon Oh-seok] It has been revealed that the total annual cash dividends paid by companies listed on the Korea Exchange (KOSPI) exceeded 52 trillion won last year, setting a new record high. However, the dividend payout ratio fell slightly due to a surge in net profits driven by strong performance in the semiconductor sector.

On the 4th, the Korea Listed Companies Association (hereinafter the Association) analyzed the cash dividend status and trends over the past three and ten years for companies listed on the KOSPI (797 companies) with a fiscal year-end of December 2025. The results showed that 569 companies (71.4%) distributed 52.8525 trillion won in dividends on an annual basis (including interim and year-end dividends). This represents an increase of 7.2314 trillion won (15.9%) compared to the previous year (45.5211 trillion won).
Analysts attribute this growth to the expansion of interim dividends and the establishment of a practice of consecutive dividend payments. The number of companies paying interim dividends rose to 107, a 27.4% increase from the previous year (84 companies), and the amount of interim dividends reached 17.6744 trillion won, accounting for 33.5% of total cash dividends. A total of 507 companies (89.1% of all dividend-paying companies) maintained dividends for three consecutive years, with their dividend payouts accounting for 92.3% (48.6731 trillion won) of the total, confirming a trend toward stable and sustained shareholder returns.
The dividend payout ratio stood at 31.1%, down 3.6 percentage points from the previous year (34.7%). The Korea Exchange explained that this was influenced by a 29.5% increase in listed companies’ net income, from 131 trillion won in 2024 to 169.7 trillion won in 2025. The overall dividend payout ratio was diluted as the net profits of #Samsung Electronics and #SK Hynix surged significantly for the second consecutive year due to improved conditions in the semiconductor industry. Excluding these two companies, the dividend payout ratio stood at 42.4%, a 4.3 percentage point increase from the previous year (38.1%), indicating that the trend of expanding dividends continues among non-semiconductor companies.
The structure where larger asset sizes correlate with greater dividend capacity was also reaffirmed. The 60 companies with assets of 2 trillion won or more paid out 40.2909 trillion won in dividends, accounting for 76.4% of the total. In contrast, while the 248 companies with assets of less than 100 billion won paid out relatively smaller dividends, their dividend payout ratio was 42.7%, exceeding that of large companies (28.9%).
By industry, dividends in the manufacturing sector totaled 28.5817 trillion won, accounting for 54.2% of the total, followed by non-manufacturing at 18.6262 trillion won (35.3%) and finance at 5.5446 trillion won (10.5%). The average dividend per company was highest in the electrical and electronics sector at 365.3 billion won, followed by telecommunications (308.1 billion won) and finance (213.3 billion won). The dividend payout ratio was high in the food, beverage, and tobacco (119.6%), paper and wood (100.7%), non-metallic (92.8%), and metal (90.1%) sectors, whereas it was low in the electricity and gas (14.4%) and electrical and electronics (18.0%) sectors.
Changes in dividend-related regulations also contributed to the spread of a dividend culture. The number of companies that changed their dividend record date to a date other than the fiscal year-end reached 288, accounting for 50.6% of all dividend-paying companies—the first time this figure has exceeded half. As a system allowing investors to confirm dividend amounts prior to the record date has spread across listed companies, the average per-company dividend gap between companies that changed their record date and those that did not narrowed from 141.5 billion won in 2023 to 49.2 billion won in 2025.
The number of companies explicitly stating their dividend policies through disclosures of corporate value enhancement plans is also growing rapidly. The number of companies that disclosed such plans and actually paid dividends more than tripled, rising from 100 in 2024 to 329 in 2025. The average cash dividend per company among these firms was 147.4 billion won, which is 8.3 times higher than that of companies that did not make such disclosures.
The introduction of a special tax exemption for high-dividend companies is also stimulating an expansion of dividends. Based on 2025 dividend performance, 280 companies—accounting for 49.2% of all dividend-paying companies—met the legal requirements and disclosed their status as high-dividend companies in 2026. The total cash dividends of these companies amount to 37.2691 trillion won, with an average dividend per company of 133.1 billion won—2.4 times and 2.5 times higher, respectively, than that of non-disclosing companies.
Looking at trends over the past decade, it is assessed that both the dividend capacity of listed companies and their commitment to shareholder returns are increasing. Annual cash dividends, which stood at 21.8 trillion won in 2016, more than doubled by 2025, while nominal gross domestic product (GDP) grew by only 45.3% over the same period. The Korea Exchange (KRX) noted that the 2025 dividend payout ratio (31.1%) is in line with the average over the past decade, explaining that the temporary spikes in 2019 (48.6%) and 2020 (63.4%) were due to base effects resulting from a significant decline in net profit caused by the U.S.-China trade dispute and the COVID-19 pandemic.