Reported by NUPIAO
On July 9 local time, memory chip giant SK Hynix made headlines by raising a staggering $26.5 billion through its American Depositary Shares (ADS) offering, officially making it the largest foreign IPO in US history. SK Hynix priced 177.9 million ADS at $149 each, representing 17.79 million Korean ordinary shares. That pricing sits at a 3.1% premium over the closing price of its regular shares on the Seoul market. The ADS kicked off trading on NASDAQ on July 10 under the ticker “SKHYV”.
This massive fundraising round instantly eclipsed Alibaba’s $25 billion record set back in 2014, easily becoming the most talked-about semiconductor capital event on the global market this week.
Looking at the trading timeline, this ADS rollout is happening in two phases. On July 10, pre-market trading started on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the temporary ticker “SKHYV”. The full regular trading session will officially launch on July 13, when the ticker will permanently switch to “SKHY”, allowing global investors to fully dive into long and short trades, long-term positioning, and all sorts of other strategies.
The underwriting team for this SK Hynix offering is top-tier, plain and simple. Four major investment banks—Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase—took the lead, backed by nine other financial institutions forming a syndicate. This setup covers global mainstream institutional sales channels and ensures plenty of liquidity for the smooth delivery of such a massive block of shares.
Before pricing even kicked off, this ADS offering was already swamped with over seven times oversubscription, with order sizes far outstripping the available shares. The types of funds jumping into this queue were incredibly diverse and global, ranging from long-term public funds and specialized tech funds to sovereign wealth funds and international hedge funds deeply rooted in the Asia-Pacific market. Just look at top-tier long-term players like Baillie Gifford and Coatue Management—they alone threw in up to $7 billion in clear subscription intent. The fact that so much massive, long-term capital is rushing in shows just how much the market believes in SK Hynix’s long-term growth potential in AI memory.
The July 9 trading session in Korea also showed exactly how the local market feels about SK Hynix’s US debut. That day, SK Hynix’s ordinary shares on the Seoul Exchange closed at 2.186 million KRW, jumping 5.30%—a gain of over 100,000 KRW in a single day. Even after dropping 25% from its historical peak in late June, the company’s year-to-date gains have still more than doubled. High-bandwidth memory (HBM) products for AI keep driving earnings expectations, keeping the stock price floating in a high range. On July 10, Korea’s KOSPI index opened up 3.57%, with SK Hynix climbing nearly 5%.
UBS just dropped their latest research report, bumping SK Hynix’s 12-month target price from 3 million KRW to 3.2 million KRW while reiterating a “Buy” rating. The report points out that the AI-driven memory super-cycle is quickly becoming a reality, and as the core leader in this track, SK Hynix keeps cashing in on the tight supply-demand balance and the shift to next-gen tech.
UBS firmly believes the recent dip is just a blip. They see three major catalysts down the road that will push the company’s valuation higher: the landing of long-term supply agreements, the official mass production rollout of HBM4, and potential stock buybacks after the ADS listing.
On the earnings front, UBS is projecting SK Hynix’s operating profit to hit 32.7 trillion KRW in 2026, beating market consensus by about 27%. For 2027, they’re looking at an even crazier 62.3 trillion KRW, topping consensus by roughly 54%.
KB Securities is singing a very similar tune. Analysts there, including Jeff Kim, noted that SK Hynix is set to ride the wave of accelerating AI infrastructure investments in the second half of the year, while also benefiting from a memory chip supply shortage expected to stretch all the way to the end of 2028.
The analysts stated, “Driven by the relentless expansion of AI-related investments, the upward trajectory of SK Hynix’s earnings and stock price is far from over.” KB Securities expects total global AI investments to hit $800 billion in 2026, $1.1 trillion in 2027, and $1.5 trillion by 2028. They bumped their target price for SK Hynix from 3.8 million KRW up to 4.2 million KRW.
The cash raised from this US IPO is going straight into Korea’s massive domestic expansion plans. On June 29, Korean Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Kim Jung-kwan announced that Korea will pour 800 trillion KRW (about 3.52 trillion RMB) into building four memory chip fabs in the southwestern Gwangju and Jeolla regions, creating the country’s second-largest semiconductor cluster outside the capital area. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are jointly throwing in 81 trillion KRW to build an advanced packaging base in Chungcheong, specifically to handle the expanding demand for AI high-bandwidth memory (HBM).
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won also chimed in, announcing plans for a fresh 1.1 trillion KRW investment to build multiple new semiconductor clusters, with 400 trillion KRW earmarked specifically for Korea’s southwestern region. Digging into the details, they plan to drop 100 trillion KRW in Cheongju, Chungcheongbuk-do for a massive expansion to ease the chip shortages sparked by the AI boom.
According to the blueprints, SK Hynix will kick off construction of the brand-new “M17” fab next year, with plans to pour 80 trillion KRW into NAND flash production by 2029. At the same time, they’re planning to add another 20 trillion KRW by the end of 2027 to build a cutting-edge chip packaging plant right in Cheongju.
And right on cue on July 9 local time, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated that they are currently in talks with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, urging them to speed up memory chip production in the US to help ease the global shortage of critical components needed for AI development.
Even though SK Hynix is basking in Wall Street’s glory, we can’t ignore the potential volatility risks lurking around. On one hand, global semiconductor valuations are facing some pullback pressure. On the other, the memory industry is notoriously cyclical. If all the new fabs coming online globally over the next three years start pumping out chips at the same time, oversupply will crush product prices and eat into the company’s profit margins.
