SK Hynix ADRs jump in Wall Street debut after record foreign U.S. share sale

SK Hynix's American depositary receipts rose 12.8% in their Wall Street debut after the South Korean memory-chip maker raised $26.5 billion in what the new report described as the largest U.S. listing ever by a foreign company and the second-largest share sale in U.S. history, behind SpaceX's $86 billion IPO last month. The listing gives U.S. investors direct access to a company at the center of the AI boom through its dominant position in high-bandwidth memory, the advanced chips used in nearly every Nvidia processor. The company has benefited from a prolonged shortage of AI memory chips, with Chair Chey Tae-won saying plans to double production capacity within five years still would not meet customer demand. SK Hynix's Korea-listed shares have surged more than 630% over the past 12 months, lifting its market value above $1 trillion and making it only the second Korean company after Samsung Electronics to reach that level. The U.S. listing also highlights the so-called Korea Discount, under which South Korean stocks often trade below global peers. Analysts at HSBC estimate the ADR listing could lift SK Hynix's valuation by as much as 20%. SK Hynix reported record 2025 revenue of 97.1 trillion won ($64.1 billion) and net income of 42.9 trillion won ($28.3 billion), while controlling roughly 60% of the global high-bandwidth memory market by revenue. The company traces its roots to Hyundai Electronics and emerged from a debt-laden post-Asian Financial Crisis consolidation before SK Group acquired it in 2012. Its early investment in high-bandwidth memory, including co-developing the first such chip with AMD in 2013, positioned it to lead the AI era ahead of Samsung and Micron. The boom has also intensified concentration in South Korea's equity market, where SK Hynix and Samsung account for more than half of the KOSPI's market capitalization and have helped drive a 135% rise in the index over the past 12 months. New pressure points are emerging as chip profits ripple through the broader economy. South Korean regulators have warned about concentrated retail speculation in leveraged single-stock ETFs tied to SK Hynix and Samsung, while the Bank of Korea and some strategists have flagged the inflationary and social effects of profit-sharing bonuses for semiconductor workers. At the same time, Samsung and SK Hynix last month announced plans to invest 800 trillion won ($517 billion) with suppliers in two new semiconductor fabrication complexes, even as some analysts caution that rapid capacity expansion could eventually revive the industry's boom-and-bust cycle.