South Korea’s conglomerates have scaled back their investments this year in the face of sluggish economic conditions, a report by a local corporate research firm showed Wednesday.

According to CEO Score, the country’s top 30 business groups spent some 91.85 trillion won ($82.42 billion) on facilities and research and development in the first three quarters of this year, down 5.8 percent from 97.5 trillion won tallied the year before.

It said facility investment, which makes up 71.2 percent of the total, stood at 65.37 trillion won, down 9.9 percent, while money spent on R&D grew 5.9 percent to 26.48 trillion won. The findings were based on regulatory filings made by companies.

“Companies were holding back on building new facilities or updating existing ones, but they were moving forward on research, which is critical for future growth,” CEO Score said.

Broken down by business group, Samsung Group, the country’s largest family-run conglomerate, or chaebol, invested 33.37 trillion in the January-September period. Its facility investment dropped 16.9 percent to 19.4 trillion won, although its R&D input reached 13.98 trillion for a 4.8 percent on-year increase.

Hyundai Motor Group, South Korea’s No. 2 chaebol, invested 9.14 trillion won, with facility investment down 10.5 percent to 6.35 trillion.

The world’s fifth-largest automotive conglomerate said its total R&D rose 9.1 percent on-year to 2.79 trillion won.

SK Group and LG Group, South Korea’s next two biggest business groups, said they both invested more this year.

SK said it spent more on facilities and R&D compared to the first three quarters of 2013. The total spent by the group that includes SK hynix and SK Telecom reached 12.92 trillion, up 21.1 percent from 2013.

LG’s investment edged up 0.6 percent overall to 12.16 trillion won. It spent more on R&D, yet slightly less on facilities.

The combined investment total of the four largest chaebol reached 67.59 trillion won, a 2.2 percent dip on-year.

Excluding these top-ranked conglomerates, investment by other large businesses stood at just 24.26 trillion won, down 14.7 percent from the year before.

By individual company, Samsung Electronics has invested 25.89 trillion won so far this year. This is equal to 28.2 percent of all investments made by all companies checked.

Samsung Electronics was followed by SK hynix with 4.97 trillion won spent, and LG Electronics Inc. with 4.34 trillion won. Hyundai Motor, the country’s largest carmaker, spent 3.9 trillion won, with LG Display reporting outlays of 3.66 trillion won, the latest report said. (Yonhap)