--- title: "Korea" canonical: "https://anchor.is/the-hysteresis/issue/11/korea" publication: "The Hysteresis" publisher: "The Hysteresis" language: "en-US" guide: "https://anchor.is/the-hysteresis/llms.txt" permalink: "https://anchor.is/the-hysteresis/issue/11/korea" issue: 11 section: "korea" description: "LG, Samsung, SK — beyond the headlines" authors: ["Ronan Adike"] published: 2026-08-24 updated: 2026-08-22 articles: 16 --- # The Hysteresis > The Hysteresis exists to give a small cross-functional team — strategy, investment, and procurement — a shared weekly instrument for reading the battery supply chain earlier than consensus. Success means the team consistently identifies inflection points in cell pricing, supplier health, and policy enforcement weeks or months before they surface in earnings calls, annual surveys, or trade press. The commercial mechanism is internal-first: the publication proves itself as a decision tool inside the organization, then extends to paid subscribers and a practitioner community as upside. Revenue follows utility — if the team makes better-timed procurement calls and competitive assessments because of what they read here, the publication earned its place. [Read on the website]() ## Issue 11 — Korea LG, Samsung, SK — beyond the headlines ### Q2 Earnings Dashboard All three Korean battery makers reported Q2 2026 results, and all three improved versus Q1. In each case, the reported number includes production credits, tariff refunds, or one-time items that cannot be fully separated from the manufacturing result in public disclosures. Underlying profitability remains ambiguous at best. Outside the quarterly cycle: LGES started LFP production at Lansing, Samsung SDI took full ownership of New Carlisle and is now liquidating a display stake to fund it, and SK On booked a one-time customer compensation whose size remains undisclosed. SNE Research's H1 data showed all three losing non-China xEV market share while the market itself grew 26% YoY. Korea's proposed domestic production credit advanced without a direct-pay mechanism, limiting its near-term value to makers currently running losses. - **LGES Still Loss-Making Before Production Credits** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 Tag: LGES Q2 Revenue KRW 7.56T, reported operating profit KRW 113.3B. Strip KRW 241.0B in North American production incentives and the underlying result was KRW -127.7B. That's better than Q1's roughly KRW -397.6B ex-incentive loss, but the manufacturing business remains unprofitable on its own. - **Lansing SOP August 18 LFP Split Unknown** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 Tag: LGES Lansing Production started August 18 at Lansing, Michigan: LFP cells for ESS and NMC for Toyota, with target capacity above 35 GWh across both chemistries. LGES has not disclosed the LFP-NMC line allocation, yield data, or customer-accepted volumes. Argus confirmed no split was provided. - **Samsung SDI Battery Segment Profits, Support Unclear** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 Tag: Samsung SDI Q2 Battery segment operating profit KRW 159.3B, the first positive quarter in seven. Consolidated result includes KRW 107.7B AMPC plus an undisclosed tariff refund. Earnings call: "excluding the impact of tariffs, a small profit was recorded." The manufacturing-only result cannot be isolated from public disclosure. Scope and utilization context in the sidebar. - **Samsung Display Stake Sale Funds New Carlisle** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 Tag: Samsung SDI Funding Announced today: Samsung SDI will sell 13.09M Samsung Display shares for KRW 4.45T (~$3.2B), closing August 27. Proceeds tagged for "future growth engine investments." The likely destination is the 27 GWh New Carlisle plant, now wholly owned after Samsung SDI completed its GM buyout on August 11. - **SK On Posts KRW 821.8B Profit, Drivers Unquantified** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 Tag: SK On Q2 Battery revenue KRW 2.95T, operating profit KRW 821.8B versus Q1's KRW -349.2B loss. SK Innovation cited higher Asian sales, one-time customer compensation, and increased AMPC. None quantified separately in public materials. Full Q2 decomposition in this week's feature. - **Korean Makers Lose Share in Growing Market** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 Tag: Market Share SNE Research H1 2026: non-China xEV battery usage up 26.3% YoY to 269 GWh. Korean combined share dropped from 37.2% to 27.6%. LGES 16.7% (from 20.7%), SK On 7.0% (from 9.5%), Samsung SDI 3.9% (from 7.0%). All three declined YoY in a market that grew by a quarter. - **Korean Production Credit Proposed, Cash Access Missing** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 Tag: Policy Signal Korea's August 3 tax reform plan proposes a 10-year domestic production credit for secondary batteries. The structural gap: no direct pay or credit transfer provision. Loss-making companies cannot monetize it as cash. Requires National Assembly approval, not enacted as of August 21. - **Three ESS Sites Running, No Acceptance Data Yet** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 Tag: ESS Execution LGES has started production at Lansing, Jeffersonville (Ohio), and Spring Hill. Samsung SDI runs NCA ESS at StarPlus with LFP targeted for Q4. SK On targets H2 2026 LFP at Commerce, Georgia. No facility has disclosed customer-accepted ESS run-rate or sustained commercial output volumes. ### SK On Decomposition - [SK On Q2 2026 — More Solvent, Not Demonstrably Healthier]() — By [Ronan Adike]() · Published 2026-08-21 · Format: The Earnings Decomposition SK On reported KRW 821.8 billion in Q2 operating profit at 36.4% utilization. Those numbers cannot coexist unless non-manufacturing income dominated the quarter. The company names three contributors — increased AMPC, a one-time customer compensation, higher Asian volume — and quantifies none of them. Ford's Q2 10-Q separately records a $0.5 billion dissolution-related settlement that is temporally coincident and roughly the right magnitude, though neither filing connects the two. The recurring manufacturing result, calculable through Q4 2025 and worsening, is no longer isolable. This decode works the four profit layers, maps the 94.3 GWh capacity stock against 45X and FEOC eligibility, and tests which ESS gates SK On has actually crossed. ### Utilization Scope Trap - [Samsung SDI's 73% Utilization Applies to Small Batteries Only]() — By [Ronan Adike]() · Published 2026-08-21 Samsung SDI's H1 2026 [DART filing](https://dart.fss.or.kr/report/viewer.do?rcpNo=20260814003578&dcmNo=11537677&eleId=12&offset=149138&length=27018&dtd=dart4.xsd) (August 14) discloses 73% capacity utilization — 860 million units produced against 1.178 billion unit capacity. The scope is small-battery facilities only: Cheonan and Tianjin consumer cell plants ([Edaily](https://en.edaily.co.kr/news/eda202608145759/), August 14, reporting directly from the filing). The full-year 2025 figure of 50.4% covered the same small-battery scope. The filing provides no utilization figure for medium- and large-format EV or ESS operations. ### Source Documents - **SK On Posts KRW 822B Operating Profit in Q2 — One-Off Compensation and AMPC Account for the Swing** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 Profit reversal driven by non-recurring items; none of the three named Q2 drivers is individually quantified. - **SK On H1 2026 Utilization Falls to 36.4% — Scope and Methodology Changes Complicate the Comparison** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 DART filing shows sharp utilization drop, but JV dissolution altered the denominator and calculation method. - **SK On's Flatiron ESS Deal: 1 GWh Firm, 6.2 GWh Right of First Offer — Not 7.2 GWh Contracted** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 Korea Herald preserves the structural distinction most trade press headlines obscure in the Flatiron contract. - **Korean Battery Trio Loses 9.6 Percentage Points of Non-China xEV Share in H1 2026** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 SNE Research data: LGES barely grew, SK On shrank, Samsung SDI fell 29% YoY as Chinese makers gained. - **Samsung SDI's 73% Utilization Rebound Covers Small Batteries Only — EV/ESS Rate Still Undisclosed** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 Edaily's DART-based report is a scope trap: the recovery is in consumer cells, not sourcing-relevant segments. - **Samsung SDI Returns to Profit After Seven Quarters — AMPC and Tariff Refunds Remain Unquantified** — [Source]() — Published 2026-08-21 Battery segment earned KRW 159.3B, but underlying margin without US incentives and refunds is unclear. ## Other sections in Issue 11 - [Signal]() - [China]() - [The Log]() - [Defense]() - [Qualification]() ## More - [Publication guide]() - [Issue archive]()