SEOUL, KOREA - Eugene Investment & Securities said on June 17 that the speed with which Tesla Motors, the U.S. electric car startup, is growing is much more than expected earlier and that Samsung SDI will benefit from the fast expansion of the electric car market. The securities firm maintained its investment opinion on the stock at "buy" and the target price of 190,000 won.

 

Yoon Hyuk-jin, senior analyst with Eugene Investment & Securities, said, "Currently Tesla, Nissan, and BMW is negotiating to create a charging standard for electric vehicles. Once the companies agree on a single standard, it will bring about the full blooming of the market as the standardization will pull the cost down substantially." He added that the main reason Tesla offered its rivals to have access to its patents had to do with the fact that the U.S. company believed market expansion was more important than its own profit.

 

He further said, "The mid- and large-sized battery business of Samsung SDI will benefit a lot from this change." Samsung SDI's business division producing automotive batteries posted sales revenue of 137.2 billion won last year. He predicted the division's sales would more than triple to 500 billion won this year. He also said, "Samsung SDI will also benefit from the group-wide governance structure reform that would raise the value of the stockholding in other group affiliates."