$1 Trillion SK Hynix Storms Wall Street With Record-Shattering $26.5 Billion Nasdaq Debut

SK Hynix raised about $26.5 billion in its Nasdaq debut, one of the largest US share sales by a foreign company, giving global investors access to the AI memory leader. The South Korean chipmaker, which holds 56.4% of the high-bandwidth memory market and counts Nvidia as its lead customer, saw its market value approach $1 trillion amid surging AI demand.

$1 Trillion SK Hynix Storms Wall Street With Record-Shattering $26.5 Billion Nasdaq Debut Record ADR Sale opens the AI memory leader to US investors SK Hynix has raised about $26.5B £19.9B as it lists on the Nasdaq with a market value close to $1T £750B , in one of the largest share sales US markets have recorded. The South Korean memory-chip maker sold 177.9M American depositary receipts at $149 £112 each, with 10 receipts equal to one Seoul-listed share. Institutional orders ran more than seven times the shares on offer. Bloomberg called the sale the largest ever US first-time share offering by a foreign company. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, and JPMorgan managed the deal, which came in below an original target of roughly $29B £21.8B after a recent slide in Korean shares. Trading opens on Friday under the temporary ticker SKHYV, on a when-issued basis, before switching to SKHY when regular dealing begins on Monday, 13 July. The raise eclipses Alibaba's 2014 New York listing, which brought in $21.8B £16.4B , and trails only SpaceX's $75B £56.3B Nasdaq debut last month. Inside the Record SK Hynix Nasdaq Debut The Seoul shares still slid about a quarter in the fortnight before the debut, and the deal involves 17.79M newly issued shares, so it dilutes existing holders rather than cashing them out. For some fund managers, that access matters more than the cash. 'The SK Hynix ADR listing is important as it provides U.S. and global investors who do not have access to local Korean stocks access to the leader in high bandwidth memory globally for the first time,' Richard Clode, a portfolio manager at Janus Henderson, told Reuters. The appeal rests on SK Hynix's grip on high-bandwidth memory or HBM, the ultra-fast chips stacked beside Nvidia's processors https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nvidia-5-trillion-milestone-ai-bet-1807219 inside artificial-intelligence servers. The company holds 56.4% of the global HBM market, according to its US securities filing, and counts Nvidia as its lead customer. Surging AI demand has kept memory prices elevated through 2026 and driven SK Hynix's Seoul-listed shares up more than sevenfold over the past year, lifting its market value past $1T. How AI Memory Powered SK Hynix's Trillion-Dollar Rise SK Hynix's revenue reached about $65B £48.8B in 2025, and first-quarter sales this year rose close to 200% from a year earlier, with operating margins above 70%. The Seoul shares still slid about a quarter in the fortnight before the debut. The memory industry is cyclical, and the deal involves 17.79M newly issued shares, so it dilutes existing holders rather than cashing them out. Investors have long pinned a so-called Korea discount on the stock. Before the debut, it changed hands at about 5.5 times expected earnings, against roughly 6.7 times for its US rival Micron https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/micron-technology-surpasses-tesla-ai-memory-boom-1805096 . Some managers reckon the Nasdaq listing could narrow that gap. Sam Konrad, an investment manager at Jupiter Asset Management, said the listing could 'help re-rate the Korean-listed SK Hynix shares, which are currently trading at a PE discount to Micron, whereas we think SK Hynix should trade at least on par with Micron's valuation.' Nic Puckrin, a cross-asset analyst and founder of Coin Bureau, was more cautious. He told IBTimes UK in an email statement that SK Hynix's earnings 'rely almost entirely on soaring memory chip prices' and that any reversal would spring 'a classic cyclical trap.' He noted the firm 'posted a roughly five-billion-dollar operating loss just three years ago, and memory is a business where that can happen again.' Puckrin also flagged competition around the next-generation HBM4 chip, warning that SK Hynix no longer holds its commanding lead now that Nvidia 'has already certified both Samsung and Micron for it.' He would not, he added, 'treat this as a clean undervalued-stock story.' SK Hynix is building a $4B £3B advanced-packaging plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, its first US factory, due to open in 2028, and in line for up to $458M £344M in US CHIPS Act grants and up to $570M £428M in federal loans. At home, it is developing a fabrication cluster at Yongin, south of Seoul, budgeted at $390B £293B , with four plants due by 2033. It has also earmarked $10B £7.5B for a US-focused effort it calls AI Company, which leans on Solidigm, the NAND-flash unit it bought from Intel in 2021 for $9B £6.75B . The chipmaker launched in 1983 as Hyundai Electronics and took its present name after SK Telecom bought a controlling stake in 2012. Now the second most valuable company in South Korea behind Samsung, SK Hynix described the US move as a way of 'broadening our touchpoints in the United States, the epicenter of AI technological innovation.' © Copyright IBTimes 2025. All rights reserved.