Korea Fund Inc. (The) New Common Stock (KF)

FairStock Score: 54/100 — MIXED

Key Financials

AI Analysis

AI-generated, general educational analysis — not personal investment advice.

As a value investor, I have to start by remembering that The Korea Fund is not an operating company; it is a closed-end fund holding Korean equities, managed by Allianz Global Investors U.S. LLC. That changes the meaning of the numbers. At the 2026-10-13 close of $59.49, the FairStock calculation shows a P/E of 1.02 and a P/B of 0.68. A price below accounting book is superficially Graham-like. The FairStock Graham Number is $339.70, implying an 82.49% margin of safety, and the calculated ROE is 98.35%. Those figures look extraordinary, but for a fund they can be artifacts of realized gains, distributions, or accounting timing rather than durable earning power. The very weak Piotroski F-Score of 1/9 and ROCE of -0.06% warn me not to take the apparent cheapness at face value. There is no revenue or profit growth data, and the Lynch category is none because only zero years of filed annual results are available; I cannot judge a multi-year record. The dividend yield is just 0.74%, and beta of 1.64 with a 52-week range of $32.01-$81.94 tells me this is volatile and exposed to Korean market, currency, and geopolitical risk. The FairStock Score is 54/100, neither compelling nor broken. Altman Z-Score of 125.11 is not meaningful for a fund. The manager's bottom-up approach may add value, but the fund's main moat is limited. If book value is real, the discount could reward patience; if not, the cheapness is an illusion. I would want several years of NAV and distribution history before calling it a bargain.

In plain English: The Korea Fund is a closed-end fund that owns a basket of stocks in Korea. At its recent price, it looks cheap compared with its accounting value and earnings, but other quality signals are weak and there is not enough long-term history to judge it. The price is in the middle of its 52-week range, and the fund carries high volatility risk.

The full AI analysis, bull and bear case and key monitorables are in FairStock Pro.

Data as of 2026-10-13 close · note generated 2026-10-15 · model deepseek-flash

Fundamentals from company filings and market-data providers; prices are end-of-day, not real-time. AI-generated analysis is general and educational — not personal investment advice. Scoring methodology · Score test · Disclaimer