The Capital Efficiency Signal: The Year a Ratio Is Actually Measuring
On 21 September 2026 a KOSDAQ-listed company resolved a third-party share placement of roughly KRW 10bn, disclosed the following morning. The mechanics are ordinary: 4,796,163 new shares at KRW 2,085 apiece — about 16.3% of shares outstanding before the issue — priced at a 10% discount to a reference price of KRW 2,316 struck the day before the board met. Payment is due 9 November 2026, the new shares list on 30 November, and every one of them is locked up for a year. On payment, the largest shareholder changes. The line worth stopping on is not any of those. It is the use-of-proceeds table. Purpose: working capital, in full. Schedule: KRW 4.999bn in 2027, KRW 5.00bn in 2028 and after. Two rows. The year the money actually arrives is not one of them. What that does to the arithmetic Capital efficiency indices read three things: return on invested capital, asset turnover, and the investment gap — the distance between capital a company holds and capital it has put to work. The first ...