Korean Earnings Season Explained: Preliminary Results and Deadlines

Korean listed companies tell investors their quarterly numbers twice before the official report arrives. Samsung Electronics, the country's largest company, flashed its third-quarter operating profit of 107.4 trillion won ($79.2 billion) on Oct. 8, 2026, just eight days after the quarter ended. Full preliminary figures followed on Oct. 29, and the legally required quarterly report comes later still.

That sequence shapes how Korean stocks move. The first figures are unaudited and often thin, while the complete report, with earnings per share (EPS) and the auditor's work, can arrive weeks after the share price has already reacted.

The calendar is set by law. The Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act, Korea's main securities law, gives listed companies 45 days after each quarter or half-year and 90 days after the business year to file their periodic reports.

Between those dates sit fair-disclosure filings, earnings calls and the analyst forecasts that Korean newspapers use to call a result a "surprise" or a "shock." Here's what you need to know.

What Is a Preliminary Earnings Filing in Korea?

A preliminary earnings filing is an unaudited summary of a quarter's results that a company publishes before its official report. In Korean it is called jamjeong siljeok, roughly "provisional results," and it is filed as a fair disclosure on DART, the regulator's filing system, and KIND, the exchange's.

Fair disclosure is a Korea Exchange (KRX) rule. Its English page covers "Forecasts for business results such as sales or future/management plans, etc. and information regarding provisional business results." A company that wants to share such numbers with analysts or investors must file them first, and "in principle, the deadline for the fair disclosure is before making such information available to recipients," the KRX says.

The filing is a fixed form. It shows revenue, operating profit, profit before tax, net profit and net profit attributable to owners of the parent. Each comes for the quarter and the year to date, against the previous quarter and the same period a year earlier.

What it leaves out matters as much. There is no EPS line, no balance sheet, no cash flow statement and no auditor's opinion. Samsung's Oct. 29 filing carried the warning, "This information is provisional and may differ from final figures" (translated from Korean), and said the auditor had not finished its work on the company and its subsidiaries.

For a guide to DART, KIND and their English versions, see how to read Korean company filings.

How Does Samsung's Earnings Guidance Work?

Samsung releases two preliminary filings each quarter: a short one early in the following month and a fuller one on its results day. The early filing, which foreign media usually call earnings guidance, gives only revenue and operating profit.

On Oct. 8, 2026, Samsung put third-quarter revenue at 195.00 trillion won ($143.7 billion) and operating profit at 107.40 trillion won. The lines for profit before tax, net profit and attributable profit were left blank. The filing said the company would disclose the results again "at the time of board approval" (translated from Korean).

The same day, Samsung filed a separate notice of an investor relations (IR) event. It set a conference call for 10 a.m. on Oct. 29, held in Korean and English at the same time, and invited shareholders to send in questions ahead of it.

On Oct. 29, the second filing filled in the gaps. It revised revenue to 195.25 trillion won and operating profit to 107.44 trillion won, and added net profit of 75.14 trillion won ($55.4 billion). Net profit attributable to owners of the parent came to 75.21 trillion won.

The pattern repeats every quarter. In 2026, Samsung's early filings came on Jan. 8 for the fourth quarter of 2025, then on April 7, July 7 and Oct. 8, with the fuller filings on Jan. 29, April 30, July 30 and Oct. 29.

Not every company follows Samsung's two-step routine. Some file a single preliminary result on the day of their earnings call instead. Simply put, the first number is fast and incomplete, and the periodic report is slow and complete.

When Are Korean Quarterly and Annual Reports Due?

Quarterly and half-year reports are due within 45 days after the period ends, and the annual report within 90 days after the business year ends. Article 159 of the Capital Markets Act sets the 90-day rule for the annual report, which Korean law calls the business report. Article 160 sets the 45-day rule for the half-year report and for the quarterly reports covering the first three and first nine months.

There is no fourth-quarter report. The fourth quarter appears in the annual report, so investors who want fourth-quarter figures rely on preliminary filings or subtract the nine-month numbers from the full year.

Article 160 has one exception. A company filing consolidated quarterly and half-year reports gets 60 days, but only for its first business year of doing so and the year after.

Weekends can push a date back. Under Article 161 of the Civil Act, the general rule for counting legal periods, a period whose last day is a Saturday or public holiday ends on the following day.

The table shows a typical year for a company whose business year matches the calendar year, as Samsung's does, with Samsung's 2026 filing dates as an example.

The reports also differ in how much an auditor has checked. The annual report includes the auditor's opinion. Under Article 170 of the act's Enforcement Decree, the half-year report attaches an auditor's review or audit report.

Quarterly reports can skip the auditor's opinion. Financial institutions and listed companies with assets of at least 500 billion won ($369 million) at the end of the latest business year must attach a quarterly review report, a lighter check than a full audit.

Annual results also trigger an exchange filing. On Jan. 29, 2026, Samsung filed a notice titled, in translation, "Change of 30% or more (15% for large companies) in sales or profit structure." It showed 2025 consolidated revenue of 333.6 trillion won ($245.9 billion) and operating profit of 43.6 trillion won, up 33.23%, and told investors to check the auditor's report when it was filed.

Which Profit Figure Should Investors Use: Consolidated, Attributable or EPS?

For most groups, the consolidated numbers are the headline figures. Consolidated statements combine the parent company with the subsidiaries it controls, while separate statements show the parent on its own.

Korean rules require both. Article 168 of the Enforcement Decree says a company that prepares consolidated statements must report its financial matters on a consolidated basis but also include its own statements, with the auditor's opinion on both sets.

Preliminary filings are labeled the same way. A filing titled "according to consolidated financial statements" covers the group, and one without that label covers the parent company alone. Samsung's Oct. 29 results were consolidated and prepared under Korean International Financial Reporting Standards (K-IFRS), the filing said.

The line foreign investors should look for is attributable net profit. It is the group's net profit minus the share that belongs to minority shareholders in subsidiaries the parent does not fully own. That is the profit that belongs to the company's own shareholders, and EPS is built from it.

The gap between the two lines can run either way. Samsung's third-quarter attributable profit of 75.21 trillion won was slightly higher than its total net profit of 75.14 trillion won, meaning the minority holders' share was a small loss in that quarter.

Korean companies report EPS in their periodic reports, not in preliminary filings. The figure Korean filings show is basic earnings per share attributable to owners of the parent, in won.

Samsung's half-year report, filed Aug. 14, 2026, lists basic EPS of 17,902 won ($13.20) for the first six months of 2026, against 6,605 won for all of 2025 and 4,950 won for 2024. The same summary shows attributable net profit of 118.37 trillion won ($87.3 billion) for the half.

Simply put, an investor who wants EPS on results day has to estimate it. Dividing the attributable profit in a preliminary filing by the share count in the latest periodic report gives a rough figure, but share buybacks and cancellations change the count, and the official number comes only with the quarterly or annual report.

For how EPS feeds into a single company's results, see our report on Samsung Electronics' record third-quarter profit.

How Do Korean Media Use FnGuide Consensus?

Korean newspapers judge a result against the consensus, the average of brokerage analysts' forecasts, and many cite FnGuide, a Seoul financial data provider. A result well above the consensus is called an earnings surprise, and one well below it an earnings shock.

Samsung's guidance shows how this works. Its 107.4 trillion won operating profit "exceeded the market consensus of 106 trillion won compiled by FnGuide," the Korea JoongAng Daily reported on Oct. 8, 2026, while revenue fell short of forecasts of 200.3 trillion won.

Consensus figures are not a single number. The Korea Times reported the same day that brokerages' consensus stood at 106.64 trillion won for operating profit and 200.64 trillion won for revenue. The figure depends on which provider is used, which brokerages it includes and the date it is taken.

A miss can move a stock hard. On Oct. 29, 2026, the Korea JoongAng Daily described Hanwha Aerospace's third-quarter operating profit of 452 billion won ($333 million) as an "earnings shock," set against a FnGuide consensus of 1.21 trillion won.

Companies often answer a miss in their own words. "The third quarter was affected by adjustments to delivery schedules and one-off costs, but results will improve in earnest from the fourth quarter," a Hanwha Aerospace spokesperson said in a press release, according to the newspaper. For another case of a stock falling after a profit miss, see our report on Hanwha Engine's third quarter.

Dollar amounts in this article are converted at 1,356.6 won per dollar, the Seoul closing rate at 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 6, 2026, reported by the Korea Herald.

Together, the early guidance, the fuller preliminary filing and the periodic report due 45 or 90 days after each period form a three-step earnings season, in which the market reacts to unaudited numbers first and receives EPS and the auditor's review last.