Korea Circuit (007810.KS) Q1 2026: ₩26.4B Operating Profit on PCB Rebound, but Operating Cash Swings to –₩21.1B
PCB cycle recovery delivers the strongest quarterly margin in two years — yet a ₩69.3 billion working capital drain sends operating cash flow deeply into the red.
Source: Q1 2026 Quarterly Report (55th Fiscal Year, Jan. 1–Mar. 31, 2026) — Filed with DART | Consolidated Financial Statements | Unit: ₩ billions
Korea Circuit's Q1 2026 results provide a pointed answer to the central question of the PCB recovery cycle: how durable is the rebound from the 2024 trough? Consolidated operating profit reached ₩26.4 billion — nearly half of FY2025's full-year operating profit of ₩53.8 billion, compressed into a single quarter. Revenue rose 18.4% year-on-year to ₩419.9 billion, with demand recovery across smartphone HDI boards, memory modules, and semiconductor package substrates driving gross margin expansion from 6.0% to 9.1%. The swing from a ₩1.7 billion operating loss in Q1 2025 to a ₩26.4 billion profit is genuine, but the magnitude is amplified by a ₩11.77 billion warranty provision that burdened the prior-year quarter and has since disappeared; on a normalized basis, operating profit grew approximately 2.6 times. The more consequential signal, however, sits below the income statement: despite ₩30.1 billion in consolidated net profit, operating cash flow turned to –₩21.1 billion — a divergence driven entirely by a ₩69.3 billion working capital drain that warrants close scrutiny.
PCB is a cyclical industry tightly coupled to IT end-market demand. Korea Circuit posted a consolidated operating loss of ₩33.2 billion and a total net loss of ₩129.0 billion in FY2024 — a severe trough — before returning to an operating profit of ₩53.8 billion in FY2025. Q1 2026 represents a continuation of that recovery, not a departure from it.
