SK Hynix's HBM Edge Meets Its First Real Test as Samsung Qualifies for Vera Rubin and a $20 Billion Fab Ramps Up

SK Hynix is sprinting to defend a lead it spent years building. The memory giant just opened the first clean room at its M15X fab in May, investing more than 20 trillion Won in a facility that will churn out HBM3E, HBM4, and eventually HBM4E. Mass production from this new line is expected around November, six months after the initial startup. It's a bet that the AI-driven hunger for high-bandwidth memory will last well beyond any cyclical pause.

The company's first-quarter numbers make that wager look sensible. Revenue hit 52.58 trillion Won, a 198 percent surge from a year earlier. Operating profit landed at 37.6 trillion Won, pushing the operating margin to 72 percent — a figure that outshines even Nvidia's 65 percent and sets a new industry benchmark. The cause is elementary: DRAM, NAND, and HBM are completely sold out. SK Hynix can't satisfy every customer's request.

That scarcity is drawing deep-pocketed suitors. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are reportedly offering to pre-finance capacity to lock in HBM allotments for years ahead. SK Hynix is treading carefully, wary that tying up production too early could weaken its pricing leverage. The tension between eager buyers and cautious supply is the defining feature of this market. Goldman Sachs recently raised its forecast for the DRAM supply gap in 2026 to 4.9 percent, calling it the tightest mismatch in 15 years. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won expects chip shortages to persist until at least 2030.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SK Hynix?

Yet the narrative is no longer a solo. Samsung, after months of speculation, has passed final HBM4 quality tests at Nvidia and AMD. Volume shipments could begin as soon as June. That news rattled SK Hynix's stock: shares fell 5.16 percent to 1,745,000 Won on the day, and are down 11.69 percent for the week. The monthly return remains a staggering 49.66 percent, and the shares have more than doubled since the start of the year. But the all-time high of 1,976,000 Won, set on May 13, now sits about 12 percent above the current price — a gap that invites profit-taking.

Samsung's progress is real but incomplete. Its HBM4 yield currently sits below 60 percent, versus SK Hynix's 80 percent using its 1c-DRAM technology. Samsung has also secured qualification for Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform, an important supply-chain entry point. If Samsung manages to ramp mass production in the second half of 2026, SK Hynix's market share in Nvidia HBM orders could slip from roughly 70 percent today to between 50 and 60 percent. The decisive quarter will likely be the fourth quarter of 2026.

Analysts remain broadly bullish, albeit with wide variance. UBS lifted its price target in May to 1.7 million Won, while raising earnings forecasts for 2026 and 2027 by 22 and 29 percent respectively. SK Securities is bolder, setting a target of 3 million Won — more than 50 percent above current levels. Its logic: a forward price-to-earnings ratio of roughly 5.2 is too low for a company with this margin structure, even by cyclical standards. Bank of America describes the environment as a super-cycle reminiscent of earlier memory booms, projecting a 51 percent increase in global DRAM revenue for 2026.

The real test will come from mid-2027 onward, when new capacity at SK Hynix's Cheongju and Yongin sites begins to come online in volume. If that ramp-up proceeds without a sharp decline in selling prices, the supply premium that has underpinned the stock can hold. Until then, the company is balancing a sold-out order book, a revitalized rival, and the delicate art of turning down money — all while spending more than 20 trillion Won to make sure it still has something to sell.

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