July 8 (Bloomberg) -- SK Telecom Co., South Korea’s largest mobile-phone carrier, fell to the lowest in more than eight years in Seoul trading on mounting speculation it will bid for a stake in Hynix Semiconductor Inc.
SK Telecom, whose parent group has said it’s undecided whether it will bid for the chipmaker, declined for a fourth day, dropping as much as 3.9 percent to 148,500 won as of 9:32 a.m. in Seoul, the lowest intraday level since March 2003. Korea Economic Daily and Mirae Asset Securities Co. analyst Choi Yoon Mee said in reports today the company may make a bid.Deutsche Bank AG cut its price estimate for the stock by 8 percent, citing concern that such a move would reflect the parent’s ambitions to shed its image as a “domestic-oriented conglomerate” rather than a move that benefits the phone carrier. Lauren Kim, a Seoul-based spokeswoman for SK Telecom, wasn’t immediately able to comment.“We find it difficult to identify any clear business synergy from a telecom operator acquiring management control of a memory chip manufacturer,” John Kim, an analyst at Deutsche Bank in Seoul, wrote in a report yesterday. “The latest developments add to the list of uncertainties affecting investor sentiment.”Not all analysts would oppose the move. The export-oriented chip business might be attractive to SK Telecom, which has been looking for new sources of revenue outside the local market, where growth of mobile-phone subscribers has been stagnant, Yang Jong In, a Seoul-based analyst at Korea Investment & Securities said.The company, which was under government pressure this year to cut phone bills to curb inflation, may also be looking for less regulated businesses than telecommunications, Yang said.--Editors: Young-Sam Cho, Dave McCombs
To contact the reporters on this story: Jun Yang in Seoul at jyang180@bloomberg.net; Saeromi Shin in Seoul at sshin15@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net
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