SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in its US share offering, the largest first-time listing ever by a foreign company on an American exchange.
The South Korean memory chipmaker priced 177.9 million American depositary receipts at $149 each, with every 10 ADRs representing one Seoul-traded common share. The deal surpasses the $25 billion Alibaba raised in its 2014 New York debut and ranks as the third-largest US listing on record, behind SpaceX’s roughly $86 billion offering in June.
The ADRs begin trading on the Nasdaq on July 10 under the temporary ticker SKHYV, moving to SKHY for regular trading next week. This firms up an earlier filing that had signaled a raise of up to about $29 billion.
Demand was extraordinary. Orders during the book-building process ran more than seven times the shares on offer, drawing global long-only funds, technology-focused funds and sovereign wealth funds. Unusually, SK Hynix priced the ADRs at a roughly 2.9% premium to its Seoul closing price, rather than the customary discount used to attract buyers, and called it the first US IPO of its kind to price at a premium.
The company plans to channel the proceeds into expanding manufacturing, including the first fabrication plant at its Yongin cluster, an advanced-packaging facility in Cheongju, and 11.9 trillion won earmarked for extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment.
The appetite reflects how central memory has become to the AI boom. SK Hynix is a key Nvidia supplier and, by its own filing, holds a 56.4% share of the market for high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, the specialized chips stacked next to AI processors to feed them data at high speed. A global shortage of HBM and storage chips, which analysts expect could persist into 2030 given the years it takes to build new plants, has sent prices soaring. SK Hynix’s Seoul-listed shares have jumped more than 220% this year, and the company crossed a $1 trillion valuation in May.
Closing the Korea Discount
A core motive for the listing is to fix a persistent valuation gap. Despite leading HBM and holding a wide lead over third-ranked Micron in DRAM share and operating profit, SK Hynix has traded at a price-to-earnings ratio 20% to 40% below its US rival, a pattern known as the “Korea discount.”
The Nasdaq listing gives American investors a direct route into the top HBM producer for the first time, and analysts see it as a potential catalyst to rerate the stock closer to Micron’s multiple. It also gives SK Hynix fresh capital and global visibility to fund the enormous factory investments the AI race demands, including its share of a $518 billion pledge with Samsung under South Korea’s national chip plan.
Reasons for Caution
The record debut lands at a jittery moment. Memory stocks tipped into a bear-market territory earlier in the week, and the “Magnificent Seven” traded at their lowest level relative to the S&P 500 in a decade, as investors questioned whether Big Tech’s AI spending can sustain current chip demand. The deeper worry is the memory industry’s notorious boom-and-bust cycle; as one analyst noted, these same makers were selling below cost with negative gross margins only a few years ago before pulling back capacity.
Micron is now signing customers to rare five-year supply agreements with large upfront payments, a hedge against the next downturn, but there is no guarantee such deals prevent one. Heavy retail speculation and leveraged bets on Korean chipmakers have also amplified volatility, leaving SK Hynix’s richly valued debut exposed if the AI memory cycle turns.
