Iljin Electric makes money along two lines: a wire-and-cable business that supplies extra-high-voltage underground cables and overhead transmission lines to carry large volumes of power from generating plants into cities, and a heavy-electric business that supplies power transformers, gas-insulated switchgear (GIS), and HVDC equipment that step voltage up and down at substations. The key profit driver lately is exports of high-margin extra-high-voltage transformers to the Americas. Single supply-contract filings ran through April to June 2026, and the May 15 quarterly report showed Q1 operating profit up 49.1% year over year. Of the roughly $1.76 billion total order backlog at the end of Q1, heavy-electric (transformers) accounted for about $1.23 billion, or 70%, securing revenue visibility for the next several years. What stands out recently is that, riding the structural trends of grid replacement and data-center demand, revenue has grown for five straight years and profit growth is outpacing revenue, leaving room to read the stock as undervalued relative to its growth and profitability at a forward P/E in the mid-20x range on this year's projected earnings and an ROE of 17.6% — while a 259% debt ratio and sensitivity to the pace of Americas order execution, exchange rates, and copper prices remain cautions.
At-a-glance assessment financial health · growth · profitability · valuation
- Debt is somewhat higher than equity (debt ratio 259.2%).
- Revenue rose 29.6% year over year, and the pace is quickening (3-year trend: rising).
- Most recent quarter (Q1 2026) revenue was 10.7% higher than a year earlier.
- ROE is 17.6% (controlling-interest basis). It is below the sector average.
- Operating margin is 7.4%.
- The forward P/E sits below the sector median.
Ownership & governance As of 2025-12-31
Largest shareholder Iljin Holdings 49.25% (corporate)
Controlling bloc incl. related parties 50.12%
With the controlling bloc holding 50%, control is very secure but the free float is thin.
🔎 In-depth analysis
- Iljin Electric earns money along two lines.
- One is its wire-and-cable business, making extra-high-voltage underground cables (154kV to 400kV class) that carry large volumes of power from generating plants into cities, along with overhead transmission lines strung on towers and optical ground wire (OPGW).
- The other is its heavy-electric business, supplying power transformers that change voltage at substations (including 345kV-class extra-high-voltage transformers), gas-insulated switchgear (GIS) and switchboards that connect and cut power, and HVDC (high-voltage direct-current transmission) equipment.
- Its main customers are power utilities such as KEPCO and overseas transmission-and-distribution operators in the United States, the Middle East, and elsewhere, and the key profit driver lately is exports of high-margin extra-high-voltage transformers to the Americas.
- In short, equipment that 'sends electricity over long distances and changes its voltage' is the core of revenue, and the company benefits directly from the worldwide trend of stepping up transmission-equipment investment to replace aging grids and connect data centers and renewables.
- The latest close is ₩62,300 and the market cap is ₩3.0 trillion.
- The price sits below its 20-day line (₩76,945) and its 60-day line (₩95,187).
- Trading below both its short- and mid-term moving averages, the trend is on the soft side.
- The RSI (an auxiliary gauge that measures the strength of gains against losses over the past 14 days on a 0–100 scale) is 33.0, a neutral level.
- The price is down 21.1% over one month and down 14.7% over three months, and stands 56.8% below its 52-week high.
- Its relative strength versus KOSPI is 52 (on a 1–99 scale, converted from return relative to the index over the past year with heavier weight on recent performance; higher means stronger than the market).
- That places it in roughly the top 48% of all stocks by strength.
- Over the past three months it lagged the index by 37.3%.
- Chart reading is best done alongside trading volume and the dates when filings occur.
- On a confirmed full-year (2025) basis, the P/E ratio (how many times one year's earnings the share price represents) is 28.60x and the P/B (how many times shareholders' equity) is 5.05x.
- The important point is that these figures are all on a trailing basis, drawn from last year's confirmed results.
- For a company like Iljin Electric at an earnings inflection where profit is climbing steeply, the prior year's numbers make the share price look more expensive than the true earnings power.
- Calculated on this year's projected earnings, the forward P/E comes down to the mid-19x range, distinctly lower than transformer-focused peers (whose trailing P/E generally runs above 60x).
- Profitability is also solid: ROE (how much it earns in a year on shareholders' equity) is 17.6%, using capital efficiently, and the operating margin is 7.4%, on an improving trend as the Americas transformer mix grows.
- The debt ratio (debt against shareholders' equity) is 259.2%, more debt than equity, but much of this stems from working-capital characteristics common to industries like cable and heavy electric — buying raw materials such as copper in advance and delivering on long lead times — and with an interest coverage ratio of 7.5x, the company generates ample profit to cover its interest.
- The pace of growth is clearly accelerating.
- Over five years, revenue climbed step by step from ₩1.25 trillion in 2023 to ₩1.58 trillion in 2024 to ₩2.04 trillion in 2025, a three-year revenue CAGR (the average annual growth rate) of 28.1%.
- Profit rose even more steeply: net profit went from ₩14.9 billion in 2021 to ₩34.5 billion in 2023, ₩46.2 billion in 2024, and ₩103.9 billion in 2025, with the last two years especially sharp.
- For 2025 alone, revenue rose 29.6%, operating profit 89.6%, and net profit 124.9%; profit growing much faster than revenue means margins improved as more money was kept on the same sales, and the engine behind that is the growing share of high-margin Americas transformers.
- In Q1 2026 this trend continued, with revenue of ₩506.1 billion (+10.7%), operating profit of ₩50.8 billion (+49.1%), and net profit of ₩35.9 billion (+57.0%), and the quarterly operating margin entered double digits at 10.0%.
- The new Hongseong plant expansion raises extra-high-voltage transformer and cable capacity by more than 60%, leaving room for more volume as the year progresses.
- The reason this year's earnings are set another step higher than last year's is clear: demand for extra-high-voltage cables and transformers is rising structurally with grid replacement and data-center power connections; supply is tight, so pricing and utilization support each other; and the backlog already built up is being recognized as this year's revenue.
- In other words, this year's better earnings are not a flash in the pan but the combined result of demand, pricing, and orders, and on a forward (this year's projected earnings) basis the actual valuation is lower than the impression given by a trailing P/E of 38x.
- The recent flow can be summarized as a virtuous cycle of 'orders → capacity expansion → margin improvement.' Single supply-contract filings continued in April (voluntary disclosure correction), May, and June (correction) of 2026; for a cable and heavy-electric company, such large supply contracts lead to high-margin Americas revenue and are recognized over the coming quarters.
- The May 15 quarterly report (for the period ended March 2026) is the official document confirming Q1 results, and operating profit up 49.1% year over year confirmed the earnings leverage.
- The total order backlog at the end of Q1 was about $1.76 billion, of which heavy-electric (transformers) made up about $1.23 billion, or 70%, securing revenue visibility for the next several years.
- Meanwhile, in April and May several filings on changes in the largest shareholder's and executives' holdings and large-holding reports were also filed; these notify of changes in the ownership structure rather than the business itself, so their character should be distinguished from contract and earnings filings.
- This is a stock with clear strengths.
- Riding the structural trends of grid replacement and data-center power demand, revenue has grown for five straight years, profit is growing far faster than revenue, and margins are stepping up as the high-margin Americas transformer mix grows.
- On this year's projected earnings the P/E is in the mid-20x range, distinctly below transformer-focused peers (trailing P/E above 60x).
- Profitability (ROE 17.6%) also holds up, so rather than there being a good reason for it to look cheap, this is closer to a case of valuation coming down as profit grows quickly — leaving ample room to read it as undervalued relative to its growth and profitability.
- There are also points to watch.
- The 259% debt ratio reflects the burden of growth investment, so interest rates and working capital bear watching, and results are sensitive to the pace of Americas order execution, exchange rates, and raw-material prices such as copper.
- In sum, when the power-infrastructure cycle continues, the new plant's volume runs at normal capacity, and raw-material burdens stay controlled, both growth and a low valuation shine together; conversely, if order recognition is delayed or raw materials and exchange rates move unfavorably, margins and earnings visibility weaken.
🔎 Valuation vs peers Undervalued
Compared against domestic power-equipment and transmission-and-distribution companies that handle both wire-and-cable and heavy-electric, based on actual business mix — the closest being transformer-focused Hyosung Heavy Industries and extra-high-voltage cable maker Taihan Cable & Solution, with diversified power-equipment maker LS Electric as a reference.
| Peer | P/E | P/B | ROE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hyosung Heavy Industries | 49.68x | 10.98x | 22.11% |
| Taihan Cable & Solution | 64.70x | 3.40x | 5.26% |
| LS Electric | 99.12x | 13.73x | 13.85% |
(a) Position versus the real peer set: measured against the transformer-and-cable peers whose business is closest (Hyosung Heavy Industries, Taihan Cable & Solution, LS Electric), Iljin Electric's confirmed trailing P/E of 38.3x sits distinctly below them. (b) Premium/discount: even so, its ROE (17.6%) and growth (net profit +124.9%) sit near the top of the peer set, so the low multiple is not due to inferior fundamentals. (c) The limits of trailing and the case for forward: because the company is at an inflection where profit is surging, the trailing P/E overstates the true valuation, and on this year's projected earnings the P/E falls into the mid-20x range, widening the gap versus peers further. Taken together, the valuation is low relative to growth and profitability, so it reads as undervalued — while the 259% debt ratio and sensitivity to Americas orders, exchange rates, and copper prices are cautions to watch alongside.
Price history Close · MA20 · MA60
The latest close is ₩62,300 and the market capitalization is ₩3.0 trillion. The price sits below its 20-day moving average (₩76,945) and below its 60-day moving average (₩95,187). It is under both its short- and medium-term moving averages, so the trend looks subdued. The RSI (a supplementary indicator that gauges the strength of gains versus losses over the past 14 days on a 0-100 scale) is 33.0, a neutral level. The one-month change is -21.1%, the three-month change is -14.7%, and the position relative to the 52-week high is -56.8%. Relative strength versus the KOSPI is 52 (on a 1-99 scale, converted from returns against the index over the past year with more weight on recent performance; higher means stronger than the market). It is stronger than roughly 52% of all stocks. Over the past three months it lagged the index by 37.3%. Chart interpretation is best done alongside trading volume and the dates on which disclosures occur.
Relative performance stock vs index · start = 100
Excess return vs index · 3M -37.29% / 6M -38.04% / 12M -28.43%
Key metrics vs sector median
Valuation
The P/E of 28.60x is below the sector median (40.10x). The P/B of 5.05x is below the sector median (10.98x). Both metrics are low versus peers, so the price is not expensive relative to earnings and assets. That said, this P/E is based on last year's (trailing) results. With recent quarterly earnings up sharply, the trailing P/E can look higher than it really is, so a precise read is best done on this year's expected (forward) earnings.
Enterprise value (EV)
EV = market cap + net debt. It reflects cash and debt, so it captures the real cost of the whole business that market cap alone misses; lower multiples are cheaper relative to earnings or sales.
Intrinsic value (DCF estimate)
DCF (discounted cash flow) estimate — discount rate 6.5%, initial growth 10.0%→terminal 2.0%, 10-yr forecast, free-cash-flow basis, forward earnings power normalized 1.49x. A reference range that shifts materially with assumptions.
Profitability & financials
Return on equity (ROE) is 17.6%, below the sector average (22.0%). The operating margin is 7.4%. The debt ratio is 259.2%, so the financial structure is somewhat high.
Growth FY2025 · annual report (consolidated)
| Item | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $826.3M | $1.0B | $1.4B | +29.63% ↑ faster |
| Operating profit | $40.3M | $52.9M | $100.2M | +89.64% ↑ faster |
| Net profit | $22.9M | $30.6M | $68.9M | +124.90% ↑ faster |
| 5-year | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $617.9M | $771.9M | $826.3M | $1.0B | $1.4B |
| Operating profit | $13.5M | $20.9M | $40.3M | $52.9M | $100.2M |
| Net profit | $9.9M | $16.1M | $22.9M | $30.6M | $68.9M |
| Revenue CAGR | 4-yr avg 21.69% | ||||
Revenue rose 29.6% year over year (2023 ₩1.2 trillion → 2024 ₩1.6 trillion → 2025 ₩2.0 trillion), and the three-year trend is 'rising'. The pace of growth also quickened from the prior year. Operating profit rose 89.6% year over year. Profit is growing at an accelerating pace. Over the 5 years on record, revenue compound annual growth (CAGR) is 21.7%. The two-year revenue CAGR is 28.1%. In the most recent quarter (Q1 2026), revenue was 10.7% higher than the same period a year earlier.
Latest quarterly results Q1 2026 · vs year-ago
Technical indicators
What stands out
- P/E and P/B are both low versus peers, so the price looks inexpensive relative to earnings and assets.
- ROE of 17.6% points to solid profitability.
- Revenue grew 29.6% year over year, a sign of growth.
Points to watch
- The figures shown are based on the last annual report as of the writing date, so it is best to review the latest quarterly results and filings alongside them.
Recent news & events searched · sourced
- 2026-06-05UpdateCorrection filing on a single supply contract — the terms of a power-equipment supply contract were amended and re-disclosed.Because supply contracts are booked as revenue over several quarters, the pace at which the contract size and delivery timing feed into next quarter's results is the key point. Source
- 2026-05-15FilingQuarterly report (for the period ended March 2026) filed — confirming Q1 2026 revenue of ₩506.1 billion, operating profit of ₩50.8 billion, and net profit of ₩35.9 billion.An official document confirming that Q1 operating profit rose 49.1% year over year, serving as primary evidence of the high-margin structure and the improving earnings trend. Source
- 2026-05-12UpdateSingle supply contract signed — a new power-equipment supply contract.New orders raise future revenue visibility, and if they lead to high-margin Americas volume, they are positive for margin improvement. Source
- 2026-04-07UpdateSingle supply contract signed (voluntary disclosure) correction — existing supply-contract terms amended and re-disclosed.A document confirming the continuation of an order pipeline built on long-term supply contracts; the contribution to quarterly results varies with the revenue-recognition schedule. Source
Figure cross-check computed ↔ external
Recent filings
- 2026-06-05Single supply/sales contract (amended)
- 2026-05-29OwnershipOfficers'/major-shareholders' holdings report
- 2026-05-29Corporate governance report
- 2026-05-20OwnershipLargest-shareholder ownership change report
- 2026-05-20OwnershipOwnership-change filing
- 2026-05-15PeriodicQuarterly report
- 2026-05-12Single supply/sales contract
- 2026-04-29OwnershipLargest-shareholder ownership change report
- 2026-04-29OwnershipOwnership-change filing
- 2026-04-29OwnershipOfficers'/major-shareholders' holdings report
- 2026-04-17OwnershipOfficers'/major-shareholders' holdings report
- 2026-04-07Single supply/sales contract (amended)
📖 Plain-language glossary — expand if you are new to this
- P/E
- How many times a year's net profit the price is worth (lower is cheaper relative to earnings). The P/E here is on trailing (last full-year) results; for companies whose earnings swing fast (memory chips and other cyclicals/high-growth), a forward P/E on this year's expected earnings is more accurate.
- P/B
- Price relative to net assets (equity). Around 1x means it trades near book value; below 1x means below book.
- P/S
- Price relative to a year's revenue — useful for growth companies with thin earnings.
- Net debt / EV
- Net debt = interest-bearing debt − cash. Negative means more cash than debt (net cash). EV (enterprise value) = market cap + net debt, closer to what it would cost to buy the whole business.
- EV/EBIT · EV/EBITDA · EV/Sales
- Enterprise value against operating profit (EBIT), EBITDA, or revenue. Unlike P/E these reflect debt and cash; lower is cheaper relative to earnings power or sales.
- FCF / FCF yield
- Free cash flow = operating cash − capex, the cash actually left over. FCF yield = FCF ÷ market cap; higher means more cash generated per unit of market value.
- Intrinsic value (DCF)
- Future free cash flow (or, for some capex-heavy but profitable names, forecast earnings) discounted to today to estimate per-share value. Because it shifts a lot with the discount-rate and growth assumptions, it is shown as a bear/base/bull range, and the basis and assumptions are disclosed in one line beneath it.
- ROE
- How much profit the company earns in a year on its equity (%). Higher means better returns on capital.
- EPS / BPS
- Earnings per share / net assets (book value) per share.
- Operating / net margin
- Profit left from the core business / final profit after tax and interest, per unit of revenue.
- Debt ratio
- Debt relative to equity (%). Higher means more reliance on borrowing (norms vary by sector).
- Current ratio
- Assets convertible to cash within a year against debt due within a year. Above 100% leaves some short-term headroom.
- Interest coverage
- How many times operating profit covers the interest owed. Below 1x means operating profit alone struggles to cover interest.
- Dividend yield / payout ratio
- The year's dividend as a % of today's price / the share of earnings paid out as dividends.
- Revenue CAGR
- Multi-year growth expressed as a single yearly average (compound annual growth rate).
- RSI (short-term signal)
- Whether recent price action is overheated or beaten down. Above 70 is overbought, below 30 oversold.
- MA20 / MA60 (moving averages)
- The 20- and 60-day average price. Price above them signals a firmer short-term trend.
- vs 52-week high
- How far below the past year's peak the price sits now (%).
All figures are for reference only; how they read varies by sector and over time.
Sources: Korea FSC market-price API (data.go.kr), OpenDART, KRX/KIND — public data only.
Bong Stocks presents public-data-based information for reference only. It is not investment advice and contains no target prices, ratings, or buy/sell recommendations. Verify independently before making any decision.