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Technology Stocks : Samsung and Wireless -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dexter Lives On who wrote (61)	6/17/2002 11:38:29 AM
From: waitwatchwander	Respond to of 374

Blue-chip Companies See Upgrading of Rating hankooki.com Rob: Regarding NESPOT and evdo ... The answer is no, not yet anyway! By Kim Sung-jin Staff Reporter Korean blue-chip companies are seeing upgrading of their ratings. Moody's raised Samsung Electronics' long-term corporate bond rating on June 3 from Baa2 to Baa1. Prior to that, Standard and Poor's (S&P) raised its corporate rating to BBB+ in last November, and Japan's R&I to A- last April. Following the earlier upward revisions of the Korea Electric Power Corp.'s rating by Fitch and Moody's, S&P lifted its rating from BBB to BBB+. S&P also upgraded credit ratings of commercial banks, Kookmin, Hanvit and Shinhan, last month. POSCO and LG-Caltex Oil Corp., which have had annual meeting with Moody's and other international credit rating firms, also have high chance of their credit rating being upgraded. Meanwhile, U.S. firms' ratings are being downgraded. S&P dropped world's No. 2 mobile handset maker Motorola's credit rating by one notch from BBB+ to BBB, and Moody's downgraded Hewlett Packard's long-term collateral bond rating from A2 to A3. Foreign media have been publishing quite favorable comments on Korean companies these days. Business Week, in its latest June 24th edition, ranked Samsung Electronics in the first place in its ``Information Technology 100'' annual tally. It made the announcement after evaluating the top 550 IT firms worldwide with annual revenue of at least $300 million, in terms of revenue performance, revenue growth, return on equity and total return. KTF, the mobile service affiliate of the nation's largest telecom operator KT, ranked fourth, SK Telecom seized the ninth place by leapfrogging 151 notches from last year's rank of 160th, and LG Telecom was placed at the 43rd, while rankings of most of U.S. IT firms, including Dell, IBM and Microsoft, fell. The Financial Times as well focused on remarkable progress of Korean companies when it publicized its world's top 500 firm list FT500. Majority of Korean firms' rankings drastically improved with SK Telecom, KT and the Korea Electric Power Corp. retaining the 200th, 328th and 383rd places, respectively. Samsung Electronics outstripped GM, Motorola, Hewlett Packard and Goldman Sachs, in terms of total market value, and positioned itself at the 85th, up from the 225th last year. Foreign media's interests are centering particularly on Samsung Electronics and Korea's information technology (IT) industry. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on its June 13 edition that ``Koreans are trying to create enticing brand names that consumers around the world will want to buy over and over again. It's a feat that precious few Asian companies outside Japan have been able to pull off.¡'' Citing a quote from Ray Brown, vice president for general merchandising, electronics, at Sears, Roebuck & Co., WSJ wrote ``Just 24 months ago, Samsung was seen as a third-tier company, but now it's broken into the top level.'' Far Eastern Economic Review reported in its June 20th edition, that global telecom industry's future is in South Korea and tech-savvy Koreans' response to the new technology will shape the outcome of third-generation services globally. sjkim@koreatimes.co.kr