KOSDAQ Rallies 8.5% in Two Sessions as Biotech Lifts Technology Growth Segment

The KOSDAQ index closed at 780.72 on August 4, up 43.37 points or 5.88% from the previous session — capping a two-day advance of roughly 8.5% that was driven disproportionately by the exchange’s Technology Growth segment and its biotech constituents. The move followed an August 3 close of 737.35, itself a gain of 17.59 points (2.44%), meaning the index added about 61 points across just two trading days.

Where the Buying Concentrated

The sector breakdown tells a consistent story across both sessions. On August 3, the Technology Growth segment — the KOSDAQ tier reserved for companies admitted on the strength of their technology rather than current profitability — rose 7.1%, the largest gain of any segment, with General Services up 4.16%. On August 4 the order flipped but the leaders did not: General Services climbed 8.77% and Technology Growth added another 8.21%, both far outpacing the index’s overall 5.88% advance.

Two names stood out in the August 4 session: LigaChem Biosciences and ABL Bio, both drug developers whose gains helped pull the broader biotech complex higher. That profile fits the Technology Growth segment’s outperformance — the tier is heavily populated by pre-profit biotech firms whose valuations swing on pipeline sentiment rather than earnings.

LigaChem: A Pre-Profit Bellwether

LigaChem Biosciences illustrates why the Technology Growth tier behaves the way it does. The company, which trades on KOSDAQ under code 141080, was founded on May 2, 2006 by Kim Yong-ju and a team drawn from LG Chem’s life-sciences operation in the Daedeok research cluster, and listed on May 10, 2013. It remains deeply loss-making by design: fiscal 2023 revenue came to roughly 34.1 billion won against an operating loss of about 80.8 billion won and a net loss near 73.7 billion won, the classic financial shape of an antibody-drug-conjugate developer funding research ahead of licensing income.

The company traded under the name LegoChem Bioscience until Denmark’s LEGO Juris A/S successfully challenged its 2018-registered “LEGOCHEMPHARMA” trademark. After Korea’s Supreme Court finalized the invalidation, the firm adopted its current name.

The Ownership Backdrop

As the stock rallied, a large-shareholding report for LigaChem Biosciences filed by Pan Orion Corp. Limited appeared on the Financial Supervisory Service’s DART disclosure system. Orion Group became the company’s largest shareholder through a 550 billion won cash injection that secured a 25% stake — an unusual arrangement in Korean biotech, where a confectionery-rooted conglomerate now anchors one of the sector’s most closely watched drug developers. That backing gives LigaChem a funding cushion that most of its pre-profit Technology Growth peers lack, one reason the stock functions as a sentiment gauge for the segment.

Reading the Two-Day Move

A near-6% single-day rise in a broad index is rare, and the concentration of gains in Technology Growth and General Services suggests this was a risk-appetite rally rather than an earnings-driven one. Segments built on future cash flows are the most sensitive to shifts in sentiment and liquidity, in both directions. The same leverage that produced back-to-back gains of 7.1% and 8.21% in the Technology Growth tier would work equally hard against it if the mood turns — a dynamic worth keeping in view as the index sits at 780.72, its highest close of the two-session stretch.