SEOUL — South Korea's major entertainment companies are enjoying some of the most visible global success in K-pop history, with BTS touring world stages again, Stray Kids filling arenas internationally, and aespa and BABYMONSTER rapidly expanding their overseas fan bases. But in the stock market, the opposite has been true, with shares of the country's four largest entertainment agencies all declining over the past six months, according to a report published by Chosun Ilbo.

HYBE, the agency behind BTS, has fallen 48.9% over the past six months, the steepest decline among the four major companies. JYP Entertainment, home to Stray Kids, has dropped 41.4% over the same period. YG Entertainment, which manages BLACKPINK, declined 23.3%, while SM Entertainment posted the smallest decline of the group at 9.2%.

Analysts point to a shared underlying problem at both HYBE and JYP: heavy dependence on a single, dominant artist or group. For HYBE, that concentration centers on BTS; for JYP, on Stray Kids. HYBE faces an additional profitability challenge, generating substantial revenue that has not translated into comparable net profit.

According to a report from SK Securities, HYBE's gross margin fell from 43% in the first quarter of this year to 32% in the second quarter, a period that fully reflected BTS's world tour. While concert revenue rose sharply during that stretch, artist settlement payments and production costs for the tour rose alongside it,........

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