123890KRXThe short version
Korea Asset In Trust Co., Ltd.
Korea Asset In Trust develops apartment projects on land it does not own, charging a percentage of pre-sale proceeds — and, in its highest-fee product, lending the construction cost into the trust accounts it manages.
Between April and August 2026 the shares closed as high as ₩2,765 and as low as ₩2,065, finishing at ₩2,325 on 7 August — about a quarter of reported book value.
Mkt cap ₩284.5BP/E FY26E 4.8×
₩2,325
Close, 7 August 2026
₩204.3bn
FY2025 revenue
₩739.4bn
Advanced into its own trust accounts
8.8%
Share of sector revenue, from 19.5% in 2017
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Snapshot
Korea Asset In Trust Co., Ltd. in numbers
Price
₩2,325.00as of 2026-08-07
Mkt cap
₩284.5B
| Year to Dec (KRW) | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026E |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | 259.1B | 226.4B | 204.3B | 208.0B |
| EBIT | 116.7B | 51.8B | 34.2B | – |
| EBIT margin | 45.0% | 22.9% | 16.8% | – |
| EPS | 1059.00 | 306.00 | 404.00 | 483.00 |
| P/E | 2.2× | 7.6× | 5.8× | 4.8× |
| FCF yield | −86.8% | −114.5% | 71.4% | – |
Consensus: Yahoo Finance analyst estimatesDerived from run data; ratios use the latest price.
IThe business
The product
A licensed trustee paid a percentage of apartment pre-sale proceeds on land it does not own.
Posted fee rates by trust product
| Product | Rate | Charged on |
|---|---|---|
| Borrowing-type land trust | 3.5% | Pre-sale proceeds |
| Trust-format redevelopment | 2.5% | Pre-sale proceeds |
| Completion-guarantee land trust | 1.5% | Pre-sale proceeds |
| Management-type land trust | 0.5% | Pre-sale proceeds |
| Collateral trust | 0.2% | Secured limit |
FY2025 rate card. A seventeen-fold spread between the top and bottom product means the mix of mandates matters more than the count.
- The mechanism. A landowner or an owners' union transfers legal title; the company arranges the permits, appoints the contractor, runs the pre-sale, collects the money and hands back the surplus.
- The expensive product lends too. In a borrowing-type land trust the trustee funds the construction cost out of its own balance sheet, which is why it is paid 3.5% rather than 0.5%.
- Revenue is amortisation. A land-trust fee is spread evenly across a three-to-four-year trust period, so reported fees are contracts signed years earlier — and the base only arrives if the units sell.
The revenue engine
Interest from lending into its own trust accounts has overtaken the fees for managing them.
Fee income and interest income (₩bn)
Consolidated. The lines crossed in FY2024; group revenue fell only 3.9% across the four years, but the composition moved much further.
- Fees halved. Fee and commission income fell 47%, from ₩119.5bn to ₩63.2bn — 56% of revenue in FY2021 against 31% in FY2025 — while interest income rose 77% to ₩110.3bn.
- The assets stayed. Land-trust principal under management rose to ₩10,604bn, yet land-trust fee income divided by it fell from 0.83% to 0.39%: the fee base is pre-sale proceeds, and pre-sales stalled.
- The crossover, stated plainly. In FY2025 the company earned ₩51.5bn of interest lending into its own trust accounts against ₩41.4bn of land-trust fees for managing them.
Where the profit sits
Two-thirds of FY2025 operating profit came from the finance subsidiary, not the trust licence.
FY2025 operating income by segment (₩bn)
Korea Asset Capital₩bn23.368%
Trust company₩bn926%
Other and eliminations₩bn1.96%
Group operating income of ₩34.2bn. The trust company's margin was 6.2%; the subsidiary's was 41.1%.
- The trust company runs at break-even. It turned ₩146.3bn of FY2025 revenue into ₩9.0bn of operating income; in the March 2026 quarter, on a separate basis, ₩51.4bn of revenue produced ₩93m.
- The subsidiary does the earning. Korea Asset Capital, the wholly-owned specialist lender, turned ₩56.7bn of revenue into ₩23.3bn, on ₩688.0bn of assets and ₩463.5bn of its own equity.
- Share of the licensed field. Among the fourteen trust companies the regulator licenses, its share of sector operating revenue fell from 19.5% in 2017 to 8.8% in 2025, the lowest in the series.
IIThe record
The record
Operating profit went from ₩146.9bn in 2022 to ₩34.2bn in 2025, both engines failing at once.
Operating profit by source (₩bn)
Fee franchise = fee income less fee, selling and administrative expense. Lending spread = interest income less interest expense and credit-loss provisions.
- Operating leverage in reverse. Selling and administrative expense was ₩43.5bn in FY2021 and ₩42.5bn in FY2025: a headcount that underwrites and supervises projects does not scale down with the fee.
- Provisions ate the spread. Credit-loss provisions of ₩40.3bn, ₩76.9bn and ₩66.0bn across FY2023 to FY2025 consumed most of the interest the loan book produced.
- FY2025's profit rise is not operating. Net income rose 32% to ₩49.4bn on ₩32.6bn of non-operating income, ₩26.7bn of it a litigation award — 78% of operating income, with no similar claims disclosed.
The statements
Cash flow tracks the loan book, not the income statement: −₩325.7bn in FY2024, +₩203.3bn in FY2025.
Operating cash flow and net income (₩bn)
Consolidated. For a lender this is the expected shape — but it is not the shape of the fee business the company describes itself as.
- The swing is the book, not the business. Operating cash flow was minus ₩246.6bn in FY2023 and minus ₩325.7bn in FY2024 as advances went out, then plus ₩203.3bn in FY2025 as recoveries exceeded them.
- Borrowed to fund it. Consolidated borrowings went from ₩330.0bn at end-2023 to ₩616.6bn at end-2024 and ₩579.2bn at end-2025, and equity fell from 81.2% of the parent's average balance sheet to 64.4%.
- What the regulator sees. Of ₩1,442.1bn of assets subject to supervisory classification at end-FY2025, ₩707.9bn — 49% — was substandard or below, against 31% two years earlier.
IIIThe story now
What is happening now
The advance book is finally shrinking, and the reserve held against what is left keeps rising.
Trust-account loans: gross balance and allowance rate
| Period | Gross (₩bn) | Allowance rate |
|---|---|---|
| FY2021 | 261.5 | 14.3% |
| FY2022 | 224.0 | 16.4% |
| FY2023 | 468.8 | 11.2% |
| FY2024 | 819.1 | 13.2% |
| FY2025 | 802.6 | 20.1% |
| 1Q26 | 739.4 | 25.3% |
Coverage was thinnest exactly while the book was being built.
- What the book is. Money the trustee advanced into trust accounts it manages, to fund construction on units that had not sold — the loan inside the 3.5% product from the first card.
- The build. Between the start of FY2023 and the end of FY2024 the group advanced ₩904.6bn into trust accounts and took ₩297.3bn back, lifting the gross balance from ₩224.0bn to ₩819.1bn.
- The turn. In the March 2026 quarter it advanced ₩70.3bn and recovered ₩133.6bn — a net ₩63.2bn repayment — while adding ₩25.7bn to the allowance.
The carry
In FY2025 the advance book's interest did not cover the reserve added against it.
Operating income and interest expense (₩bn)
Interest is charged inside operating expenses, so operating income is struck after it. The two lines crossed in FY2025.
- In FY2025 Korea Asset In Trust's trust-account loan book produced ₩51.5bn of interest income and absorbed a ₩53.4bn increase in its own allowance, while the group's interest expense for the year was ₩39.7bn against ₩34.2bn of operating income — a funding bill incurred on the ₩258.1bn of borrowings the parent raised in 2024, the year the same advance book grew from ₩469bn to ₩819bn and parent cash fell to ₩2.4bn.
- What it costs a holder. Netted with the group interest bill, the FY2025 combination is ₩41.7bn — ₩341 a share, 3.9% of the ₩8,803 book value per share and the same 3.9% of consolidated equity.
- The strongest facts against it. At group level the sign flips: the capital arm's ₩49.2bn of loan interest against an ₩8.2bn allowance build takes lending revenue to ₩100.7bn against a combined ₩61.6bn build. Write-offs were ₩253.8m against a ₩63.7bn charge, and the March quarter returned ₩63.2bn net.
The pivot
The order book rebuilding the fee line is priced at roughly a third of the old rate.
Contracted fees as a share of the projects' total cost
Borrowing-type land trust contracts by signing vintage. The step down came in one move, between the 2024 and 2025 vintages.
- The repricing. The fee franchise earned ₩75.9bn of operating profit in FY2021 and ₩18.9bn in FY2025; the 2025 vintage rebuilding it carried ₩59bn of fees on ₩1,883bn of project cost, 3.1% against 7.4% a year earlier.
- What it scales to. Intake feeding 2026 to 2028 is 43% below that feeding 2022 to 2024, putting the fee line near ₩63bn a year — where FY2025 sits — against ₩110.7bn averaged over 2022 to 2024.
- The strongest facts against it. Project cost is not the fee base; the obligation book shrank rather than grew, from ₩505.2bn drawn on four HUG-route sites at end-2022 to ₩56.2bn at 31 March 2026, so the 100% redevelopment share is residual; and the largest named schemes are in Seoul and Gyeonggi.
Korea Asset In Trust's fee franchise contributed ₩75.9bn of operating profit in FY2021 and ₩18.9bn in FY2025, and the 2025 order vintage rebuilding it carried ₩59bn of contracted borrowing-type fees against ₩1,883bn of total project cost — 3.1% against 7.4% on the 2024 vintage, because redevelopment is priced at 2.5% of pre-sale proceeds against 3.5% conventional — while at 31 March 2026 the group's entire guarantee and completion-obligation book was four redevelopment sites with ₩183.3bn of limits and ₩67.4bn drawn.
The other side
Almost none of the provisioning has been realised as loss, and the cash has started coming back.
₩63.2bn
Net recovery from the advance book, 1Q26₩133.6bn recovered against ₩70.3bn advanced
0.4%
FY2025 write-offs against the credit charge₩253.8m written off against ₩63.7bn charged
₩32.3bn
Credit-loss charge, 1Q263.6 times the year-ago quarter, and above every quarter of 2025
A−
Korea Ratings grade, cut 2 May 2026Outlook first moved to negative in April 2025
The May 2026 rating action post-dates the last filing in the corpus and is sourced from the Korean financial press.
- Provisions have not been tested. Across FY2023 to FY2025 the group charged ₩174.3bn of credit losses against loan receivables and wrote off ₩19.4bn — 11% of what it provided.
- Partly presentation. The IFRS allowance rose from ₩151.9bn to ₩215.7bn in FY2025 while the regulatory reserve fell from ₩169.8bn to ₩117.6bn, so total loss-absorbing provisions rose 3.6%.
- One thing genuinely tightened. Loans assessed individually for impairment rose from ₩147.5bn to ₩416.8bn — the stricter treatment — and the allowance rate on the advance book followed to 25.28%.
IVThe price
The price
Book value per share is up 27% since 2021 and the price down 44%: 0.26 times book.
Share price and book value per share (₩)
December closing-price midpoints; 2026 is the 7 August close against 31 March book. The multiple has been lower in every year since 2021.
- The arithmetic. ₩2,325 on 122,373,926 shares is ₩284.5bn of market value against ₩1,077.2bn of consolidated equity at 31 March 2026.
- Not company-specific. The only other listed pure-play trust company trades at 0.25 times book after an operating loss of ₩20.9bn in 2025, against this company's ₩34.2bn of operating profit.
- What that says about returns. On a zero-growth identity, 0.26 times book at a 10% cost of equity is a permanent 2.6% return; the five-year adjusted average is about 5.4%.
What it could be worth
A stress well beyond anything recognised still leaves book value near three times the price.
Value per share on disclosed bases (₩)
Book value, 31 March 2026
₩8,803
After both disclosed stresses
₩6,964
5.4% through-cycle return at 10% cost of equity
₩4,754
Broker target, September 2025
₩3,100
The stresses mark the subsidiary's book at the parent's 25.28% rate and lift the advance-book allowance to 40% — ₩225.0bn together, 20.9% of equity.
- The asset reading. Closing the ₩792.7bn gap between book and market out of the credit books alone takes a cumulative 75.3% loss on ₩1,352.3bn of gross property-development credit.
- The returns reading. A 5.4% through-cycle return at a 10% cost of equity justifies roughly half the discount on its own, with no asset-quality claim attached; the rest has to be an opinion about recovery.
- What is not stretched. Borrowings were ₩581.5bn against ₩153.8bn of cash and ₩154.0bn of undrawn lines, and the net operating capital ratio stood at 364% against a 150% minimum.
What the wait pays
A 6.45% yield paid partly out of paid-in capital, and one broker note from September 2025.
Dividend record
| Year | Per share | Payout | Disclosed yield |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2023 | ₩220 | 20.8% | 6.8% |
| FY2024 | ₩100 | 32.7% | 3.6% |
| FY2025 | ₩150 | 37.2% | 5.7% |
Paid without a break since 2015. On the 7 August 2026 close of ₩2,325 the same ₩150 is a 6.45% yield.
- Where the money came from. ₩60bn of share premium was moved into distributable retained earnings to fund the FY2025 dividend. ₩70.8bn of that reservoir remains — about four more payments.
- Coverage. One broker still follows the stock — a ₩3,100 target published on 30 September 2025 and never refreshed, struck at 0.35 times forward book on an implied 5.1% return on equity.
- Alignment. MDM and its principals hold 54.24% of votes and the same share of economics, there is no equity compensation, and no director or bloc member has bought in the open market.
What to watch
A balance sheet at a quarter of its own book, where the advances decide whether that book is real.
- 01The advance book and its allowance rate, each quarter: the March 2026 combination — a ₩63.2bn fall in the gross balance with the rate rising to 25.28% — repeating is the workout converging; the balance turning up again is not.
- 02The HUG-route line in each quarterly contingency note. A drawn balance climbing back through ₩200bn would say the completion obligation is being rebuilt at scale rather than run off.
- 03The FY2026 statement of appropriation, due March 2027: whether the dividend again required a transfer out of the remaining ₩70.8bn of share premium, or whether separate-basis profit covered it.
- 04The ₩100bn secured facility maturing on 3 August 2026 — whether it is replaced, at what rate, and whether the replacement again takes assignment of the trust cost-reimbursement claims.
This distils a guided study built chapter by chapter from the company's filings, its quarterly decks and the sector's regulator-collected data.
Compiled from the full report · 2026-08-10 · For information, not investment advice.