ELC이엘씨

ELC's trailing profits are strong on paper, but they rest on a large non-operating or one-off gain, while operating income is thin.

ELC, a Korean maker of flow meters and semiconductor equipment components, reported trailing twelve-month revenue of about ₩47.4B and operating income of about ₩3.6B to H1 2026, with net income of about ₩16.5B. The business was loss-making at the operating line in 2021 to 2024 and only turned to a small operating profit on a trailing basis recently, while trailing free cash flow was negative at about -₩14.7B despite ₩76.5B in cash and no borrowings.

What stands out

• Trailing net income (₩16.5B) is far above operating income (₩3.6B), so the bottom line depends heavily on items outside core operations; the data does not explain what they are.
• Operating margin has moved from -16% in 2024 and -2.4% in 2025 to 7.6% on a trailing basis, a clear improvement but from a low base.
• The stock is up 54.9% over one year and 31.9% over three months, but down 8.1% over one month, and trades about 15% below its 52-week high of ₩13,620.
• Trading at about 8.5x earnings and 0.8x book, the shares sit below the company's own DCF base value of ₩2,882 per share in the data, though that model is an internal estimate, not a forecast.
• Filings show a trust contract for own-share buybacks signed in July 2026 and terminated in September 2026, plus a 3.2% dividend yield in the data.

What to watch

• Whether operating profit holds up in the coming quarterly and annual results, and whether free cash flow turns positive.
• The source and recurrence of the non-operating gains behind trailing net income, which the data does not explain.
• Further filings on major shareholder holdings, executive trading plans and the status of the terminated buyback, as the data contains no news headlines to add context.