HBM leader accelerates entry into the US stock market: SK Hynix is expected to list as early as August, can it break through the "Korean discount"?

According to foreign media reports citing informed sources, South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix is planning to go public in the United States as early as August this year. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to approve its American Depositary Receipt (ADR) listing application during the week of June 22. This global leader in HBM, deeply tied to NVIDIA's AI computing power supply chain, is attempting to open financing channels for astronomical capital expenditures through a U.S. stock listing while seeking to break through the "valuation discount" dilemma that has long plagued South Korean companies.

SK Hynix confirmed in a statement: "SK Hynix plans to issue ADRs within 2026, but specific details such as scale and timing have not yet been determined." This target time window is significantly advanced compared to previous statements of "listing within the year," with plans to raise approximately $10 billion, which is expected to become one of the largest foreign company listings in the U.S. in recent years.

Underwriting Team in Place, Targeting August Listing

In March of this year, SK Hynix secretly submitted a public offering registration application for ADR listing to the SEC, but at that time, the company stated that the specific timetable had not been determined. The latest news indicates that the underwriting team has clearly locked in June to July as the target listing time window, significantly advancing from previous vague statements, showing that the company is pushing forward with its U.S. listing process at an unexpected pace.

Investment banking insiders revealed, "Even if the stock price declines, the ADR listing schedule will not change; the company's determination to enter the U.S. capital market is far more important than the timing of the choice."

In terms of underwriting configuration, SK Hynix has designated Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America as underwriters for its U.S. listing plan, forming a luxurious underwriting team. The investment banking industry expects the new stock issuance scale to be around $10 billion, and if successful, it will become one of the largest foreign company listings in the U.S. in recent years. The chairman of SK Group has previously stated that going public in the U.S. will help expand SK Hynix's shareholder base beyond South Korea, increase contact with U.S. and international investors, and strengthen its global influence.

HBM Dominance Performance Surge, Annual Profit First Exceeds Samsung

SK Hynix is one of the absolute leaders in the global memory chip market, holding an almost monopolistic position in the HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) core track of AI computing power. Financial report data shows that SK Hynix's total operating revenue for the fiscal year 2025 reached 97.15 trillion won (approximately 472.1 billion RMB), a year-on-year increase of 47%; operating profit was 47.21 trillion won, doubling with a 101% year-on-year growth, with all three major indicators of revenue, profit, and net profit hitting historical highs.

More importantly, SK Hynix's operating profit for the entire year of 2025 has surpassed that of long-time leader Samsung Electronics for the first time, marking a historic turning point in the competitive landscape of the South Korean semiconductor industry.

HBM has become the core driving force behind SK Hynix's performance surge. In 2025, the company's HBM sales are expected to more than double year-on-year, accounting for 42% of total revenue, with a single product contributing over 19 trillion won (approximately 92.3 billion RMB) in operating profit. Counterpoint Research estimates that SK Hynix's revenue share in the HBM market will reach 57% in the third quarter of 2025, while major competitor Samsung will only account for 22%, and Micron will have an even smaller share According to local media reports, SK Hynix has secured over two-thirds of the HBM supply orders for NVIDIA's next-generation Vera Rubin products, deeply locking in the incremental dividends of the AI computing power wave.

The competition in the HBM market is escalating. Samsung Electronics has announced that it will supply HBM4 chips to NVIDIA starting in February 2026 and is striving to narrow the gap with SK Hynix on the new generation of products through final quality certification testing. Samsung was once behind in the HBM3E competition and failed to pass NVIDIA's certification for the fifth generation HBM3E, but is actively launching a counterattack in the HBM4 field.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang recently stated that the three major memory chip manufacturers—SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and Micron Technology—are all qualified to supply HBM4 chips, which means that the three companies are about to begin large-scale production and supply of the new generation of HBM products. Analysts expect SK Hynix to maintain a high market share and dominant position in the HBM4 market, but Samsung is expected to make substantial progress on the new generation of products, with the HBM4 competition primarily unfolding between SK Hynix and Samsung.

Meanwhile, the technological competition in HBM is extending from the battle over stacking layers and capacity to a new battlefield centered on thermal management. SK Hynix has released an iHBM solution that directly integrates cooling elements into the package, planning to adopt this architecture in next-generation products like HBM5.

Attempts to Break the "Korean Discount"

SK Hynix is accelerating its push for a U.S. listing, one of the core logics being to narrow the valuation gap with its American peers—this is both a demand for enhancing its voice in the AI computing power supply chain and a key means to attract global capital attention.

Although SK Hynix's stock price has tripled over the past year, its valuation multiples are still significantly lower than those of its American counterparts. According to South Korea's "The Pioneer Economy," based on this year's performance expectations, the securities industry has given SK Hynix an expected price-to-earnings ratio of only 3 to 4 times, while Micron Technology is at 8 times, and SanDisk is as high as 19 times.

This valuation discount is not unique to SK Hynix. Samsung Electronics is also facing this dilemma—despite an expected 400% growth in net profit this year, its forward price-to-earnings ratio is less than 6 times, while TSMC is close to 20 times and NVIDIA is as high as 22 times. Bulls believe that the demand for storage driven by AI has spread from HBM to general products like DRAM, indicating that the storage industry is entering a new structural paradigm; bears, however, insist that storage profits have historically fluctuated significantly with economic cycles, and low valuations are a reasonable pricing of historical patterns.

The investment banking industry further points out that even based on Bloomberg's forward expected earnings per share, SK Hynix's expected price-to-earnings ratio is only 4 times—highlighting a significant valuation gap between SK Hynix and American peers like Micron. This gap is referred to as the "Korean discount," meaning that Korean companies face long-term valuation challenges below their global peers due to factors such as corporate governance transparency and geopolitical risks.

Issuing ADRs in the U.S. stock market will help SK Hynix reach passive funds, ETFs, and long-term institutional capital that only invest in U.S. stocks, thereby obtaining the necessary valuation reassessment.

There are precedents for Korean companies issuing ADRs to achieve valuation recovery. Coupang raised $4.6 billion when it landed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021, becoming one of the largest IPOs for Asian companies in the U.S. at that time SK Hynix's potential financing amount could exceed that of Coupang by more than double, and is expected to become another benchmark case for opening up valuation ceilings through a U.S. stock listing.

New Variables in the Capital Wave of the AI Sector

SK Hynix is accelerating its listing, backed by the company's massive capital expenditure plan. Its parent company, SK Group, has set a long-term strategy to invest 600 trillion won in Yongin by 2050. In February of this year, SK Hynix decided to invest 21.6 trillion won by the end of 2030 to advance the construction of the first phase of the semiconductor cluster in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province; if including the facility investment announced in July 2024, the total scale reaches 31 trillion won. Additionally, the company announced earlier this year that it will establish an artificial intelligence solutions company in the United States, planning to invest up to $10 billion.

In terms of financing tools, SK Hynix nearly completely canceled 12.24 trillion won worth of treasury shares in January this year, retaining only the portion for employee incentives, making new stock issuance the only feasible path for a U.S. listing.

SK Hynix's U.S. listing comes at a critical window period when global AI companies are intensively entering the capital market. OpenAI has secretly submitted an IPO application, with a valuation exceeding $850 billion, and is expected to go public as early as the fourth quarter of this year. Its competitor, Anthropic, has also secretly submitted an IPO application, with a valuation rising to $965 billion. Additionally, Elon Musk's SpaceX is also advancing its IPO. The combined valuation of these three AI giants could exceed $3 trillion, with potential fundraising scale approaching or even surpassing the total amount of the U.S. IPO market since 2022.

Goldman Sachs estimates that from 2026 to 2031, global AI industry investments in data centers, computing power, and electricity will total $7.6 trillion. As a core supplier of HBM, SK Hynix will gain stronger financing capabilities and global capital discourse power after a successful U.S. listing—providing funding for astronomical capacity expansion and forming a new pattern directly comparable to Micron in the U.S. stock storage chip sector, accelerating the reallocation of global capital in the AI computing power supply chain.

SK Hynix's path to a U.S. listing has reached a critical juncture, but several issues remain to be resolved. In terms of timing, whether the SEC approval progresses smoothly and whether it can be approved in the week of June 22 will directly determine if the listing can take place in August. Regarding fundraising scale, whether the initial target of $10 billion can be maintained amid market fluctuations remains to be seen based on subsequent market environment changes. In terms of valuation, after the ADR listing, how U.S. investors price SK Hynix and whether it can truly break through the valuation ceiling of "4 times the price-to-earnings ratio" will determine the strategic success or failure of this listing.

For global investors, SK Hynix's ADS listing will provide a direct institutional channel to participate in the world's largest HBM supplier for the first time—this AI computing power leader, which possesses attractiveness in terms of technological moat, market position, and shareholder returns, is presenting a new round of valuation answers to the global capital market through its U.S. stock listing