Korea's Q3 Outlook Splits: Chips and Refiners Rise, Batteries and Autos Fall

South Korea's listed companies face a sharply diverging third-quarter earnings picture, with brokerages upgrading their outlooks for semiconductor and refining counters while cutting estimates for battery and automotive names, according to a consensus revision tracker compiled by Korean financial data services.

The split marks a reversal of recent quarters, in which battery and automotive stocks carried much of the market's earnings momentum while chipmakers worked through an inventory correction. The latest round of analyst revisions now points in the opposite direction.

Semiconductor names sit at the top of the upgrade cycle. Analysts raised their consensus estimates for the sector as memory pricing and demand conditions improve, lifting expected revenue and operating profit for the September quarter. The upgrades cover the major listed chip players, whose earnings consensus moved higher over the past several weeks of revision activity.

Refiners drew the second-largest set of upward revisions. The sector's improved outlook follows more favorable refining margins, which analysts expect to translate into stronger third-quarter results for Korea's listed oil refiners.

Battery manufacturers occupy the other end of the table. Consensus estimates for Korean battery makers moved down, reflecting weaker expected earnings in the third quarter. The downgrades mark a continued deterioration in expectations for a sector that had previously been among the market's most consistently upgraded stories.

Automakers joined batteries at the bottom of the revision rankings. Analysts cut their earnings forecasts for Korea's listed car companies, dragging down the sector's consensus profit expectations for the quarter.

The divergence in revision trends is significant for Korean equities because earnings consensus shifts tend to precede reported results by several weeks. A broad upgrade cycle in semiconductors, combined with downgrades in batteries and autos, shifts the weight of expected profit growth in the Kospi back toward the chip complex.

For the semiconductor sector specifically, the upgrade cycle implies analysts see firming fundamentals entering the second half. Higher consensus estimates typically reflect updated assumptions on shipment volumes, average selling prices, or both, for the memory and logic products that dominate Korean chipmakers' revenue.

The magnitude of the split — semiconductors and refiners at the top of the revision table, batteries and automakers at the bottom — represents one of the sharpest sector-level divergences in recent quarters for the Korean listed universe.

Investors will now watch whether the upgraded semiconductor estimates hold through the October earnings season, and whether battery and auto downgrades deepen or stabilize as companies guide on second-half demand.