TLDR
- SK Hynix rose 13% on its first day of Nasdaq trading, closing at $168.01 after pricing its ADRs at $149.
- The IPO raised $26.5 billion, making it the world’s second-largest listing ever, behind SpaceX.
- CEO Kwak Noh-jung warned 2027 will be the worst year in memory industry history from a supply perspective.
- Chairman Chey Tae-won says customer demand is so high that even doubling capacity within five years isn’t enough.
- SK Hynix expects customer demand to exceed supply capacity beyond 2030.
SK Hynix made its Nasdaq debut on Friday, closing up 13% at $168.01 after opening at $170. The stock trades under ticker SKHYV and switches to SKHY as of Tuesday.
The company priced its American depositary receipts at $149, raising $26.5 billion — the second-largest IPO on record, trailing only SpaceX’s listing last month.
Chairman Chey Tae-won described the milestone simply: “It’s a kind of dream, and now it’s a dream come true.”
SK Hynix’s valuation has climbed more than sevenfold over the past year. That surge is tied directly to its position as the leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, used in Nvidia’s AI chips.
Unlike standard RAM, HBM is built by stacking multiple layers of memory together. It’s a complex, capital-intensive process, and right now, there’s not enough of it to go around.
CEO Flags 2027 as Industry’s Worst Supply Year
CEO Kwak Noh-jung didn’t sugarcoat the outlook. He said Friday that 2027 will be “the worst year in the industry’s history from the supply perspective.”
The company is building out capacity aggressively, but Kwak was direct: demand will remain above supply even beyond 2030. “We are doing our best to solve the problem,” he said.
Chairman Tae-won backed that up with a telling anecdote. After announcing plans to double capacity within five years, customers pushed back — saying it still wouldn’t be enough. “All my customers said, ‘Well, that’s not enough, man.’”
Expansion Plans Are Massive
SK Hynix is putting its IPO proceeds to work fast. The company is funding new factories and equipment as part of an aggressive build-out.
A $4 billion advanced packaging plant is planned for Indiana. The bulk of expansion, though, will happen in South Korea — including a chip fabrication cluster in Yongin priced at $390 billion.
Tae-won pointed to AI agents and physical robots as key demand drivers. “The AI agent, physical AI robot — that actually needs a lot of memory chips,” he said.
The memory market has historically been cyclical, with booms followed by sharp price collapses. But SK Hynix’s leadership believes this cycle is different. Tae-won said he sees no signs that HBM demand is shrinking.
SK Hynix trails only Samsung by market cap in South Korea. Its customers include Nvidia and Apple.
The stock closed Friday at $168.01, roughly 12.8% above its $149 IPO price.
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