South Korea’s brokerage houses slashed their fourth-quarter earnings outlook for domestic listed firms this month, data showed Tuesday, due mainly to the prolonged slump in the local economy.

The operating-profit outlook for firms listed on the main bourse came to 34.4 trillion won ($32.1 billion) for the October-December period as of Tuesday, down 4.4 percent from an estimate made a month earlier, according to the data compiled by SK Securities Co.

The outlook covers listed companies for which one or more brokerage houses have offered earnings forecasts for the fourth quarter. Market watchers said the downgrade came as listed firms are expected to continue to underperform in the last three months of 2013, since they posted a lackluster performance in the third quarter amid the protracted slump in the economy.

Of the 51 firms listed on the country’s main stock market that announced their earnings for the July-September period at end-October, 23 firms suffered a decline in their net profit from a year earlier, a separate data compiled by FnGuide showed. (Yonhap News)