Markets SKHY JUL 12, 2026

SK Hynix jumps 13% in $26.5B Nasdaq debut, largest foreign US listing on record

The Korean memory giant priced 177.9M ADRs at $149 and closed Friday at $168.01, as CEO Kwak Noh-jung warned 2027 will be the industry's worst-ever supply shortage.

BY HENLEY MARRAST · MARKETS DESK

SK Hynix closed its Nasdaq debut Friday up 13% at $168.01, capping a $26.5 billion ADR offering that ranks as the largest foreign listing in US market history. The Korean memory maker priced 177.9 million American depositary receipts at $149, a 2.7% premium to the three-day average of its Seoul-listed stock, and opened at $170 under the temporary ticker SKHYV. The permanent SKHY symbol takes effect Monday.

Demand ran more than seven times the available shares. That’s the number that matters, and it’s a cleaner read on AI capex conviction than any earnings call. SK Hynix supplies more than half the world’s high-bandwidth memory, the stacked-DRAM format Nvidia’s accelerators depend on, and public-market investors are now paying a premium for direct exposure to the choke point.

CEO Kwak Noh-jung used the debut window to set expectations. He told Reuters that 2027 will be “the worst year in the industry’s history from the supply perspective,” and told Bloomberg the memory-chip shortage will persist “beyond 2030.” Chairman Chey Tae-won called the listing “a dream come true” and described HBM demand growth as “exponentially” running ahead of capacity.

The capital plan reads accordingly. A Korea Stock Exchange filing directs proceeds toward a new fabrication plant in South Korea, a domestic packaging facility, and EUV lithography scanners. Yongin’s fab cluster carries a $390 billion price tag. A $4 billion advanced-packaging plant in West Lafayette, Indiana is slated to finish in 2028 and is eligible for up to $458 million under the CHIPS Act. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has pressed SK Hynix to add more US fabs; Micron announced a $250 billion domestic manufacturing plan the same day.

The financials scale with the narrative. Revenue nearly tripled from 2023 to roughly $65 billion in 2025. LSEG-polled analysts see 2026 sales near $235 billion, more than triple last year. The 2008 ADR flotations from Chinese state banks were the last time a foreign issuer commanded this kind of US book. Then it was sovereign credit intermediation. Now it’s the memory tier of the AI stack, priced by Americans, listed alongside Apple, and openly telling shareholders the shortage runs into the next decade.

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About the author

Henley Marrast

MARKETS DESK

Henley Marrast covers AI-equity flow, accelerator demand, and earnings prints for AI Sheet Report. She leads coverage of the public AI complex from the New York markets desk, with a focus on the daily tape and quarterly results. She has been writing about technology markets for several years.