South Korea’s conglomerates increased their investment in the first half of this year despite a drop in operating profit due to the pandemic, data showed Wednesday.

Local corporate tracker CEOScore analyzed 374 companies within 64 large business groups in the first half of this year.

The result showed that the firms’ operating profit dropped 25 percent on average year-on-year in the wake of the pandemic. Still, their investments increased 15.8 percent to reach 43.2 trillion won ($36.5 billion) during the period.

By Shin Ji-hye (shinjh@heraldcorp.com)