Shares of SK Hynix (SKHYV) surged about 13% in their U.S. market debut Friday, rising to $168 after pricing at $149 per ADR.
The offering included 177.9 million American depositary receipts (ADRs), with each ADR representing one-tenth of a common share, equivalent to 17.79 million shares. Investor demand was reportedly more than seven times the number of shares available, according to Reuters.
SK Hynix priced the ADRs at $149 each on Thursday ahead of its Nasdaq debut Friday under the temporary ticker symbol SKHYV. The stock is scheduled to begin trading under its permanent ticker, SKHY, on Monday.
Memory chip manufacturers have benefited from booming demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and storage chips, fueling a global supply shortage that has affected industries ranging from data center operators to consumer electronics.
The company’s $26.5 billion fundraising also surpassed Alibaba Group’s U.S. IPO, making it the largest U.S. listing ever by a foreign company, according to Bloomberg data.
A major supplier to Nvidia, SK Hynix is expanding its manufacturing capacity to meet surging demand for memory and storage chips fueled by the global artificial intelligence boom.
The U.S. listing also gives American investors easier access to one of South Korea’s top-performing chipmakers.
Shares of SK Hynix, which are listed on the Korea Exchange, have climbed 174% over the past six months and 634% over the past year. However, as Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre noted, memory chip stocks entered bear market territory on Tuesday.
Data center servers rely on storage chips to hold and retrieve the vast amounts of information needed to power AI models and workloads. But AI processors, such as Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), don’t constantly access all of that stored data, as doing so would reduce performance.
Instead, they depend on high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a specialized type of memory positioned close to the processor that stores the most critical data for immediate use. This allows AI chips to access information much more quickly, delivering the high-speed performance required for demanding AI applications.
American investors have had limited options for buying shares of SK Hynix or Samsung through U.S. markets. The supply crunch for memory and storage chips could extend into 2030, given the years-long process of constructing new production facilities. That said, the memory market has long been characterized by alternating periods of strong demand and sharp downturns.
