SK Hynix's High-Stakes Week: A $28 Billion Nasdaq Debut Collides With a 10% Rout at Home
Published on 07/07/2026 at 08:32 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
Just days before one of the year's largest US listings, SK Hynix has been hit by a brutal sell-off that erased more than a tenth of its market value in a single session. The South Korean memory-chip maker saw its shares tumble 10.58% on Tuesday to 2,095,000 won, extending the weekly decline to nearly 21% and leaving the stock some 30% below the record high of 2,987,000 won touched on June 25.
The sharp reversal stands in stark contrast to the company's broader trajectory. Even after the rout, SK Hynix still shows a year-to-date gain of 209% — a figure that stood at 246% just a day earlier before the Nasdaq-inspired slump hit Asian tech names. The trigger was an overnight sell-off in US technology stocks that cascaded into Korean chip equities at the open.
The damage went beyond SK Hynix. Samsung Electronics lost more than 7% last week, and the combined weighting of the two giants in the Kospi index has swollen to roughly half, up from a quarter at the end of 2024. As one eToro analyst noted, a sharp move in either stock now drags the entire benchmark.
Yet at the same time as investors were fleeing, management was doubling down on its long-term vision. CEO Kwak Noh-jung confirmed plans to invest 100 trillion won — equivalent to around $64.4 billion — in a sprawling expansion across central South Korea. The centerpiece is the M17 NAND flash fab in Cheongju, where production is slated to begin in the first half of 2029, backed by 80 trillion won. The remaining 20 trillion will go into the P&T7 advanced packaging facility, due for completion by the end of 2027.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SK Hynix?
To fund this ambition, SK Hynix is pressing ahead with its landmark Nasdaq debut on July 10. The offering comprises 17.79 million American Depositary Receipts, with the company targeting proceeds between $28 billion and $29 billion. Major institutional investors including Baillie Gifford and Coatue Management have already signaled interest in buying up to $7 billion worth of the stock. Part of the fresh capital will be used to procure cutting-edge EUV lithography systems from ASML.
The financials underpinning the expansion are as robust as they get. For the 2025 fiscal year, SK Hynix posted record revenue of 97.1 trillion won and an operating profit of 47.2 trillion won, yielding a margin of 49%. Net income came in at 42.9 trillion won, while revenue from its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips — the essential component for Nvidia and Google AI systems — doubled year-on-year.
Momentum accelerated further in early 2026. First-quarter revenue jumped 60% sequentially, operating profit surged 96%, and the operating margin swelled from 58% to 72%. Net profit for the quarter alone reached 40.3 trillion won, nearly matching the full-year 2025 figure.
SK Hynix at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
Despite those numbers, analysts are beginning to sound cautious. Bank of America warns that the rally in highly valued stocks historically precedes a valuation correction. More starkly, Capital Economics observes that the recent sell-off patterns — including the intraday plunge triggered last month by SK Hynix's own announcement of a slowdown in its AI memory business — resemble behavior only seen during major bear markets such as the Asian financial crisis, the dot-com bubble, and the 2008 meltdown.
Technically, the stock now sits just 0.43% above its 50-day moving average of 2,086,040 won, a sign that investors are recalibrating expectations after the historic run. With the Nasdaq listing days away and the debate over AI stock valuations heating up, SK Hynix enters the most consequential week of its recent history — balancing a $28 billion bet on the future against the sharpest pullback in its current rally.
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SK Hynix Stock: New Analysis - 7 July
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