SeoulAuctionCo

Founded in 1998 and listed on KOSDAQ in 2008, Seoul Auction is Korea's first and largest art auction house, forming a duopoly with K Auction in the domestic market.

Its main revenue sources are auction commissions and direct sales of inventory artworks, spanning traditional categories such as paintings, sculpture, crafts, photography, calligraphy, and ceramics, as well as editions and collectible art products.

The company runs both offline regular auctions at its Gangnam Center and online auctions, recently expanding its online catalog to lifestyle items such as luxury goods, jewelry, audio equipment, and designer furniture to broaden its retail customer base.

It has also diversified into art-secured lending and venue rental services. Its subsidiary Seoul Auction Blue operates the fractional-investment and digital-asset platform SOTWO, seeking new revenue streams, while rival K Auction has countered by acquiring a stake in Together Art in the same space.

For overseas marketing, the company holds local previews and large-scale offline auctions timed with Art Basel Hong Kong, leveraging its sourcing capability for global blue-chip artists such as Yoshitomo Nara, Yayoi Kusama, and Roy Lichtenstein.

In the domestic auction market, Seoul Auction and K Auction each hold advantages on different metrics, with Seoul Auction generally leading in hammer totals driven by high-value transactions and K Auction leading in sell-through rates through stable consignment volumes.

2025 consolidated revenue reached KRW 21.33 billion, up 3.6% from KRW 20.60 billion the prior year, yet the operating loss widened to KRW 3.95 billion from KRW 3.39 billion. The net loss attributable to owners narrowed slightly to KRW 8.77 billion from KRW 9.47 billion, marking a third consecutive year of losses.

Compared with 2022, when revenue was KRW 55.14 billion and operating profit was KRW 7.71 billion, earnings capacity has clearly weakened since 2023. Revenue fell to KRW 44.97 billion in 2023 with an operating loss of KRW 3.55 billion, and shrank further to KRW 20.60 billion in 2024.

Quarterly results show wide swings: Q2 2025 posted revenue of KRW 6.35 billion with an operating profit of KRW 591 million, but losses deepened in Q3 (operating loss of KRW 746 million) and Q4 (operating loss of KRW 1.69 billion).

Q1 2026 saw revenue surge to KRW 15.30 billion on a concentration of major auctions, with operating profit turning positive at KRW 289 million, while Q2 2026 revenue fell back to KRW 4.27 billion but still maintained an operating profit of KRW 386 million.

Despite operating profitability in both quarters, net losses attributable to owners were KRW 945 million and KRW 354 million respectively, suggesting non-operating cost items continue to weigh on the bottom line.

Over the most recent four quarters (Q3 2025 through Q2 2026), cumulative net loss attributable to owners totaled KRW 6.08 billion, indicating the company has not yet exited loss territory on a trailing annual basis.

Korea's art auction market is led by a duopoly of K Auction and Seoul Auction, with the combined hammer total of nine domestic auction houses rising 5.16% year over year to KRW 142.7 billion in 2025, even as the number of consigned lots declined.

The Korea Art Appraisal and Authentication Institute (KAAAI) characterized this as 'quantitative contraction alongside qualitative concentration,' forecasting a gradual 'quiet recovery' rather than a sharp rebound for the 2026 Korean art market, with total hammer values potentially rising 3-5%.

In the first half of 2026, the combined hammer total of seven major domestic auction houses jumped 99.05% year over year to KRW 110.8 billion, while the number of lots sold fell 11.03% from 9,607 to 8,547, reflecting deepening polarization centered on ultra-high-value works.

Seoul Auction's hammer total grew 196.3% during this period, far outpacing K Auction's 53.4% growth, a result attributed to the concentration of billion-plus-won lots by artists such as Yoshitomo Nara and Yayoi Kusama at Seoul Auction.

In contrast, online auction hammer totals actually declined (from KRW 7.29 billion to KRW 5.99 billion), underscoring a clear shift of transaction structure toward high-value offline sales.

A similar pattern was observed globally, where the combined first-half hammer total of Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips rose 70.1% while transaction volume grew only 4.5%.

Christie's noted in its 2026 market outlook that a broad-based rebound was less likely than a period of stabilization, while Sotheby's assessed that excessive speculative activity in the market had largely subsided.

The company reported that its cumulative hammer total for January-July 2026 reached KRW 68.2 billion, already exceeding last year's full-year figure of KRW 68.0 billion, and stated it expects strong results in the second half given a schedule of large regular auctions.

In the first half, the company held a large-scale offline auction at its Gangnam Center timed with Art Basel Hong Kong, achieving a hammer total of KRW 36.8 billion and setting a new domestic record.

The offline sell-through rate for January-July was 68%, up 11 percentage points year over year, while online auction hammer totals rose more than 50% to KRW 5.0 billion, already matching last year's full-year online figure.

The company has pointed to its premium sourcing capability as a competitive edge and is expected to continue its 'evening sale' format, introduced in November of last year, which packages major masterworks into separate evening auctions, into the second half.

However, market research institutions such as KAAAI, while projecting a gradual recovery for the 2026 art market, noted that the benefits are likely to concentrate among top-tier artists and high-value works, suggesting the recovery in mid- and lower-priced segments could lag.

The controlling shareholder group has also continued on-market share purchases recently, a development relevant to governance stability.