This is an educational reading exercise. The two companies are real companies chosen by the user and are used only as practice material for reading original disclosures. We do not rate either company as good or bad, and we do not recommend buying or selling any particular stock. The numbers are based on the original 2025 annual reports, and the ratios were calculated by MoneyCalcs from the original numbers.
STEP 1SK Hynix: a 10-minute read in table-of-contents order
Apply the 10-minute order from Lesson 5 directly to a real report. If you decide only "what I came to check" in each chapter, you won't get lost even in a thick report.
Search for SK Hynix on DART and open the periodic disclosure Annual report (Dec 2025) (filed March 17, 2026). Next to the cover there is a note saying "This report includes the consolidated portion," so, as you learned in Lesson 11, look at the consolidated numbers first. The order is exactly the 10-minute map from Lesson 5.
Easy analogy · a big supermarket you visit for the first time
Even a supermarket you've never visited has a floor guide that looks similar: food in the basement, appliances on the upper floors. Annual reports have the same table of contents across companies, so once you've learned the guide, you can shop through any company in the same order.
1 II. Business Overview (2 min). Open "2. Main products and services" and the revenue table is a single line: semiconductor segment, DRAM, NAND Flash and others, KRW 97.15 trillion (100%). Lesson 28 told you to look at the revenue mix, but this company does not break out amounts by product. Instead, the "price trend" text explains that "with the spread of AI, demand for general DRAM as well as HBM increased greatly." If there is no table, look for the reason in the text is the first exercise.
2 III-1. Summary financial information (3 min). Three years are in one table. Revenue goes KRW 32.8 trillion → 66.2 trillion → 97.1 trillion, and operating profit −KRW 7.7 trillion → 23.5 trillion → 47.2 trillion. As learned in Lesson 27, look at the trend rather than a single year. Going from a loss in 2023 to an operating margin of about 48.6% in two years shows in numbers how widely the semiconductor price cycle seen in Lessons 3 and 13 can swing.
3 III-2. Consolidated financial statements (3 min). From the balance sheet, find the debt-to-equity and current ratios, and from the cash flow statement, find operating cash flow and "acquisition of property, plant and equipment" to calculate FCF. Switch the tabs in the figure below to see the three statements in turn.
Source: SK Hynix annual report (Dec 2025), receipt no. 20260317000635, III-1 Summary consolidated financial information and III-2-4 Consolidated cash flow statement (converted from KRW million to KRW trillion). Operating margin, debt-to-equity ratio, current ratio, FCF and ROE were calculated by MoneyCalcs from the original numbers. Net income is on a basis of equity attributable to owners of the parent. Checked 2026-10-08.
4 III-6. Dividends (1 min). The report states that the 2025 cash dividend per share was KRW 3,000 (KRW 375 each quarter, three times, plus a year-end dividend), total dividends KRW 2.095 trillion, consolidated cash payout ratio 4.9%, and dividend yield 0.4%. Verifying with the method in Lesson 25, the KRW 2.1 trillion dividend is about 4.9% of the KRW 42.9 trillion profit attributable to owners of the parent. You can also read that, because earnings grew so much, the payout ratio number became small.
5 V. Audit opinion, VII. Shareholders (1 min). The auditor is Samjong KPMG, with an unqualified opinion on both consolidated and separate statements and "not applicable" for going-concern uncertainty. The you learned about in Lesson 30 include "review of the appropriateness of the depreciation start date for machinery." This means that when a company begins to spread the cost of factory equipment as an expense (depreciation, Lesson 7) is large enough to affect profit. The largest shareholder in Chapter VII is SK Square Co., Ltd., with a 20.07% stake.
Quick checkSK Hynix's 2025 operating cash flow was KRW 53.4 trillion and acquisition of property, plant and equipment was KRW 27.5 trillion. What is FCF, and how many times the total dividend (KRW 2.1 trillion) is it?
About KRW 25.9 trillion, roughly 12 times the dividend. 53.4 − 27.5 ≈ KRW 25.9 trillion (Lesson 20). Dividend coverage is 25.9 ÷ 2.1 ≈ 12x. However, semiconductor capital expenditure varies greatly from year to year, and there were years like 2023 when FCF was negative (about −KRW 4.0 trillion). That is why you don't look at just one year (Lesson 27).
STEP 2Kookmin Bank: how is a bank's report different?
When you open a bank's report, the familiar lines disappear. There is no revenue and no cost of goods sold, and the debt-to-equity ratio is above 1,000%. Once you pin down what a bank actually buys and sells, the unfamiliar numbers quickly fall into place.
First, one thing to check. Kookmin Bank is not a listed company. If you search for Kookmin Bank on DART, the market classification shows 'Other corporation', and Chapter VII lists the largest shareholder as KB Financial Group, with a 100.0% stake. What trades on the stock market is the holding company KB Financial ( from Lesson 11). Even so, Kookmin Bank has issued bonds and other securities, so it files its own annual report. For this exercise we read the user's pick: Kookmin Bank's own annual report (December 2025, the final version including the corrected filing). For reference, Kookmin Bank's profit attributable to owners of the parent of KRW 3.85 trillion is about 66% of KB Financial's consolidated profit attributable to owners of the parent of KRW 5.83 trillion (a simple division of the two reports' figures, with no separate adjustment for intra-group transactions).
Easy analogy · a shop that sells money
A bakery buys flour and sells bread. A bank buys 'money' and sells 'money'. It pays depositors interest to borrow their money (buying it), then lends that money out at a higher interest rate (selling it). So a bank's 'inventory' is its loans, and its 'raw material cost' is deposit interest.
Hold this analogy up against the financial statements and you can see why the numbers look different. In Kookmin Bank's consolidated balance sheet at the end of 2025, are KRW 429 trillion (about 73%) of KRW 585 trillion in assets, and are KRW 440 trillion of KRW 546 trillion in liabilities. Deposits that customers leave with the bank are money it must eventually return, so they are booked as liabilities. That is why the debt-to-equity ratio comes out at 546 ÷ 39 ≈ about 1,400%. As explained in Lesson 26, this number is not a warning sign for a bank but simply the structure of the industry.
Tap a row to see both companies' actual numbers and how to read them.
The left side is a manufacturer (SK Hynix) and the right side is a bank (Kookmin Bank), showing lines that play the same role. The pairing is a simplification to aid understanding and does not mean they are the same item in accounting terms. Sources: SK Hynix annual report (20260317000635), Kookmin Bank [corrected] annual report (20260814002787) III-1, II-2, II-5, IV; 2025 consolidated basis (NIM and soundness indicators are on the bank's standalone basis). Checked 2026-10-08.
The income statement reads the same way. Interest income, the bank's equivalent of 'revenue', is KRW 21.9 trillion; subtracting KRW 11.2 trillion of interest expense paid to depositors and others leaves net interest income of KRW 10.7 trillion. The loan-deposit spread you saw in Learn (Economics) Lesson 18 is exactly this line. In Chapter II, 'Operating status', Kookmin Bank reports an average interest rate of 4.05% on KRW loans, 2.05% on KRW deposits and a of 1.74%. NIM has been falling, from 1.83% in 2023 to 1.78% in 2024, and the management discussion in Chapter IV attributes this to "the impact of policy rate cuts". It is a passage where the report itself tells you how interest rates reach a bank's earnings.
There is one more important cost that only banks have: the , an amount booked as an expense in advance to cover loans that may go unpaid. Kookmin Bank booked KRW 1.61 trillion in 2023, KRW 0.68 trillion in 2024 and KRW 1.03 trillion in 2025. If this line jumps, read it as a sign the bank is preparing for worse economic conditions. The allowance for doubtful accounts from Lesson 7 becomes a core expense line for a bank.
Common misconceptions
"A 1,400% debt-to-equity ratio means the bank is about to collapse?" No. Because deposits are booked as liabilities, banks naturally have very high debt-to-equity ratios. A bank's safety is judged by the and the .
"Can you compare banks by operating margin too?" A bank has no 'revenue' line, so the same kind of margin is awkward. Compare them with bank-specific numbers such as net interest income, NIM, the size of provisions and ROE.
"If you read Kookmin Bank's report, do you know all of KB Financial's stock?" No. KB Financial also has other subsidiaries such as securities, insurance and card businesses. The bank's report is only a large piece of the holding company's results, and you need to read the listed KB Financial's own annual report separately to see the whole picture.
Quick checkWhich line is closest to a bank's 'raw material cost'? Choose from deposits, interest expense and general administrative expenses.
It is interest expense. A bank 'buys' money by paying depositors interest. Deposits are the balance of money bought (balance sheet), while interest expense is what was paid for it over the year (income statement). General administrative expenses are labor and branch costs, so they are closer to a manufacturer's SG&A (Lesson 14).
STEP 3Comparing the two companies on a one-page note
Now let's gather the numbers we found in both reports on one page. This is practice in writing only 'observations' with yardsticks suited to each industry, without passing judgment.
The principle of comparison is the same as in Lesson 26. Don't force numbers with the same name into the same box; choose the yardstick that fits the industry. The table below is a preview of the 'one-page note' you will build in Lesson 37.
| Box | SK Hynix (manufacturer) | Kookmin Bank (bank) |
|---|
| How it makes money | Sales of memory chips (DRAM, NAND); revenue KRW 97.1 trillion | Funds itself with deposits and lends; net interest income KRW 10.7 trillion + net fee income KRW 1.2 trillion |
| Growth (3 years) | Revenue KRW 32.8 → 66.2 → 97.1 trillion | Net interest income KRW 9.87 → 10.22 → 10.66 trillion |
| Profitability | Operating margin about 48.6%, ROE about 35.6% | NIM 1.74%, ROE about 9.9% |
| Safety | Debt-to-equity ratio about 46%, current ratio about 186% | BIS total capital ratio 17.28%, NPL ratio 0.28%, delinquency rate 0.28% |
| Cash and shareholder returns | FCF about KRW 25.9 trillion, dividend per share KRW 3,000, payout ratio 4.9% | Total dividends KRW 1.94 trillion (shareholder: KB Financial Group), payout ratio 50.28% |
| Shareholders and disclosure | Largest shareholder SK Square 20.07%, audit opinion unqualified | KB Financial Group 100%, audit opinion unqualified (Samil PwC) |
ROE is based on year-end equity attributable to owners of the parent; the debt-to-equity ratio, current ratio and FCF are on a consolidated basis, calculated by MoneyCalcs. Kookmin Bank's dividend yield is shown as '-' in the report because it is unlisted. Sources are the same as in the figure above.
Be careful when reading the table. If you place SK Hynix's ROE of 35.6% next to Kookmin Bank's 9.9% and say "semiconductors are better", you are repeating the mistake from Lesson 26. Semiconductors are an industry whose profits swing widely with the cycle (a loss in 2023), while banks steadily accumulate low margins at large scale. The reason these are written in the same row is not to compare them, but to ask where each stands by the standards of its own industry. For a semiconductor company, the next question is "where in the cycle is this margin?" (Lesson 27); for a bank, it is "how do provisions move when NIM falls?"
Finding it yourself on DART: two reports with different tables of contents
SK Hynix · II. Business Overview1. Business overview
12. Major products and services
3. Raw materials and production facilities
4. Sales and orders
5. Risk management and derivatives
6. Major contracts and R&D activities
7. Other reference matters
Kookmin Bank · II. Business Overview1. Business overview
22. Operating status (NIM, interest income and expense)
3. Derivatives transactions
4. Business facilities
35. Financial soundness and other reference matters (BIS, delinquency, NPL)
Illustrative screen. The actual table-of-contents names of the two annual reports are reproduced as they are (checked on DART 2026-10-08).
1 For a manufacturer, look at products and sales in II-2 and II-4. 2 For a bank, II-2 'Operating status' has the average interest rates on loans and deposits, NIM, and results by segment (interest and fees). 3 II-5 'Financial soundness and other reference matters' lays out the BIS total capital ratio, liquidity coverage ratio, , NPL ratio and (206.01%) for three years. For a bank report, opening this chapter first is the shortcut. Chapters III (financials), V (audit) and VII (shareholders) are in the same place in both companies' reports.
How to use it in investing
| When reading this kind of company | Numbers to look at first | Where to look together |
|---|
| Cyclical manufacturers | 3–5 years of revenue and operating margin, inventory, capital expenditure | Lesson 27 trends, Lesson 20 FCF, Learn (Economics) Lesson 31 |
| Banks | NIM, provisions for credit losses, BIS ratio, NPL ratio | II-2 and II-5, Learn (Economics) Lesson 18 |
| Reports of unlisted subsidiaries | Who the listed parent is, and its ownership percentage | Chapter VII, Lesson 11 consolidation and holding companies |
| Only one row in the sales-by-product table | The price trend discussion, Chapter IV management commentary | Lesson 28 business overview |
The numbers in this lesson are a record from the 2025 annual report at a single point in time. They may change with later quarterly reports or corrected filings (Lesson 33), and the same number can be used differently depending on the reader's question. This is only practice in studying real companies and is not a suggestion to invest in any company.
Quick checkTo quickly check 'this bank's capacity to absorb losses' in a bank's annual report, which number in which chapter would you look at?
The BIS total capital ratio under financial soundness in II-5. It shows how much equity the bank has relative to risk-weighted assets. Kookmin Bank's was 17.28% at the end of 2025. Reading it together with the NPL ratio (0.28%) and NPL coverage ratio (206.01%) in the same chapter also tells you 'how much bad debt there is, and how well the bank has prepared for it'.