Narrowed Profit Margin at Korea’s Largest Energy and Petrochem Company
Background
SK Innovation Company Limited, part of the Korean chaebol SK Group, is Korea’s largest energy and petrochemicals company engaged in businesses throughout the value chain from exploration & production to refining, petrochemicals, and lubricants.
The company is also engaged in the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.
Business Description
SKI divides its business into refining, chemicals, lubricants, and others. With its subsidiaries the company covers the whole oil value chain.
The company has Korea’s largest refining capacity at 1.2m barrels per day and produces petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel, and asphalt for the domestic and export markets.
In chemicals, SKI produces olefins such as ethylene, propylene, and butadiene, aromatics such as benzene, paraxylene and toluene, polymers such as LLDPE and HDPE as well as synthetic rubber.
Lubricants and lube base oils are sold globally under the brands SK ZIC and YUBASE. It has the largest market share globally at about 30% in Group III base oils which is the purest type of petroleum base oils.
To support its feedstock, SKI also engages in exploration & production with sites on all continents except Europe as well as trading of crude oil and petroleum products. SKI has also ventured into development and production of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles as well as information and electronic materials.
Leadership
Kim Chang-Geun was appointed to be the Chairman and Executive Director of SKI in 2013. He graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration from Yonsei University, Korea and a Master of Business Administration from University of Southern California, US.
Kim Jun has served as the President and CEO of SKI since 2017. He also holds the same positions at SK Energy. He studied a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts at Seoul National University, Korea.
World Class Benchmarking
Profitable Growth ranked at #9 in 2014, but after that, it has stayed above average. In the past 12 months, SKI ranked in the upper half among 320 large Energy companies worldwide.
Profitability has been trending downward after its #2 rank in 2016. Growth has fallen since 2015, but improved one step in rank in the past 12 months to #7 from #8.
Asset utilization has consistently ranked at #3 since 2014. Profit margin has ranked below average for the whole time period except for the year 2016.
In the past 12 months, Sales growth improved to #5 from #7. Margin change has ranked at #8 since 2017.
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