[E-Daily Reporter Hyera Lee ] On the 13th, DaishinSecurities maintained its “Buy” investment rating and target price of 110,000 won for SKTelecom(017670), noting that the company’s earnings are rapidly recovering to pre-cyberattack levels.

Kim Hoe-jae, an analyst at DaishinSecurities, stated in a report released that day, “SK Telecom is projected to post second-quarter consolidated revenue of 4.4 trillion won and operating profit of 550 billion won, a 62% increase year-over-year,” adding, “While SK Telecom has recovered to pre-cyberattack profit levels, SK Broadband is expected to post its highest-ever quarterly profit.”
DaishinSecurities estimated that SKTelecom’s second-quarter standalone operating profit would be 419.8 billion won, and SK Broadband’s operating profit would be 128.2 billion won, representing year-over-year increases of 67% and 40%, respectively.
Researcher Kim analyzed, “Although approximately 700,000 subscribers left due to the impact of last year’s cyber attack, earnings are recovering rapidly as competition in the wireless market has normalized following the end of KTCorporation’s waiver of early termination fees earlier this year.” He further predicted, “Revenue from wireless services is expected to return to year-over-year growth starting in the third quarter.”
In particular, SK Broadband is expected to exceed 100 billion won in quarterly operating profit for the third time, following the fourth quarter of last year, driven by growth in its data center (DC) business. Analyst Kim predicted, “Data center revenue will reach 480 billion won this year, a 41% increase year-over-year, and is expected to expand to 1.1 trillion won by 2030, when the Ulsan data center is factored in.”
Analyst Kim also projected that SKTelecom plans to cultivate artificial intelligence data centers (AIDCs) as a new growth engine. SKTelecom plans to sequentially launch AIDCs with a Phase 1 capacity of 5 gigawatts (GW) starting in 2029, followed by an additional expansion of 10 GW.
Researcher Kim said, “We expect the proportion of high-value-added businesses, such as GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS), to increase compared to existing data centers,” adding, “Since the company is actively seeking investment, this will not affect its existing shareholder return policy.”