South Korea's steelmaking giant POSCO was the most popular option in the stock markets in the second quarter for foreign investors, market data showed Friday, amid improving sentiments helped by its better-than-expected earnings. 

According to the data by the Korean Exchange and others, foreign investors bought a net 328.4 billion won (US$284.5 million) worth of POSCO stocks on the Seoul bourse during the April-June period. This represented the largest portion of foreign net buying, which came to about 2.39 trillion won in the same period.

The strong demand for the steelmaker came as POSCO posted better-than-expected earnings in the first quarter, which sparked major brokerages to raise their forecast for its stock prices. 

On a consolidated basis, POSCO saw its first-quarter operating profit jump 93.7 percent from the previous quarter. Its operating profit also rose by 2.9 percentage points on-quarter to 5.3 percent. 

Second-ranked in terms of net foreign buying is Naver Corp., the country's top Internet portal operator, which also impressed investors with its earnings that beat market consensus.

Foreign investors bought a net 245 billion won worth of shares of Naver during the second quarter, the data showed. Naver logged a 32.1 percent rise in its first-quarter operating profit compared with a year earlier. 

Samsung SDI Co., a battery-making unit of the Samsung Group, is the sole company that posted worse-than-expected earnings but ranked among the top 10 picks for foreign buying. Foreigners bought 198.8 billion won worth of its shares in net value during the second quarter, the data showed. (Yonhap)