Foreign investors may be dumping Samsung Electronics stock worth billions of dollars, but there's one demographic that appears to be convinced of the company's future potential. The latest data from South Korea shows that young people in particular are fond of the company's stock.
They hold more than $1 billion in Samsung Electronics stock, and the number of shareholders from people aged 20 years or younger has surged considerably over the past few years, highlighting the appeal that this stock has with the new generation.
Young people like the stock
Official data from the Korea Securities Depository portal shows that there are nearly 400,000 young shareholders in Samsung Electronics who are under the age of 20. The number of shareholders in this demographic has increased by almost 21x in four years.
Samsung Electronics is the largest company in South Korea by market capitalization with 4,672,130 shareholders. Young people aged 20 years or below own 391,869, accounting for 8.38% of the company's entire shareholding. The total value of the shares owned by these youngsters is 1.54 trillion won or $1.12 billion.
Each young shareholder owns 46 shares in the company on average, and the number of investors in the company continues to rise steadily. The first major bump in the numbers came when Samsung Electronics stock last split in May 2018, making it more accessible to a lot more investors as the split-adjusted price made it affordable to new investors.
The stock's appeal to young investors is not surprising. Samsung is a household name and one of the biggest employers in South Korea. Young people who may not be studying up on investing a whole lot will view Samsung as a safe bet. Those who do study the companies they invest in will be hopeful that Samsung's bets on technologies on the future pay off and help generate significant returns for investors.
If they have a longer investment horizon of two or more decades, they wouldn't be worried about the stock's stagnant performance over the past year, focusing on the long-term potential instead. The stock is up 402% over the past 14 years, after all. The fact that top Samsung Electronics executives bought nearly $1 million of shares in the company this month alone should also show them that even insiders are convinced of the company's long-term potential.
