The countdown to SK Hynix’s Nasdaq listing has been anything but quiet. While the South Korean memory giant prepares to ring the bell on July 10 under the ticker SKHY, its domestic shares just endured one of the most violent swings in recent memory — a 14.6% crash followed by an 11% rebound in the span of two days.
Thursday’s sell-off dragged the stock to 2,187,000 Won, wiping out weeks of gains as fears over AI demand took hold. By Friday, however, the market reversed sharply: SK Hynix closed at 2,425,000 Won for a daily gain of 10.88%. Even so, the week ended with a 9.28% loss.
The trigger originated on Wall Street, where a broad dump of chip stocks hit names like Micron Technology, which shed more than 10% despite a 260% year-to-date surge. Analysts pointed to growing anxiety that the AI infrastructure boom might be overheating, with some linking the sell-off to Meta’s plans to offload excess AI computing capacity — a move that cast doubt on sustained chip demand.
The Nasdaq weakness spilled into Seoul’s Kospi index, which still managed to claw back 5.8% on Friday to close at 8,088.34 points. Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix’s crosstown rival, surged 8.2% on the same day. Together, the two chip titans now account for roughly half of the Kospi’s weighting, up from about a quarter at the end of last year, according to eToro market analyst Zavier Wong. That concentration means any sharp move in either stock now has an outsized impact on the entire index.
Currency markets feel the gravity of the Nasdaq deal
The Won also took centre stage during the turbulent week. Bloomberg reported that authorities were bracing for capital flows related to the ADR offering, and the currency strengthened as a result. SK Hynix began using currency forwards from Friday to hedge the capital movements tied to the $29.4 billion listing, which is expected to settle on July 14.
Although the ADRs trade in US dollars, the company has said it intends to repatriate a portion of the proceeds and convert it into Won for domestic investment. That demand is already lifting the currency ahead of the listing on July 10, when US investors will gain direct access to the stock for the first time.
The offering itself is sizeable: up to 17.79 million new shares, representing roughly 2.5% of the total outstanding. The bookbuilding kicks off on Monday, July 6, with the final price set for July 9. Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase lead the syndicate, and SK Hynix is reportedly offering a base fee of 0.5%.
A $64 billion production bet amid the noise
Even as the stock whipsawed, management pressed ahead with a massive long-term plan. CEO Kwak Noh-jung announced investments of 100 trillion Won — roughly $64.37 billion — for the company’s domestic operations. Construction of the new M17 plant in the central Chungcheong region is slated to begin next year, with production starting in the first half of 2029. Of the total, 80 trillion Won will go to M17, which will produce NAND flash memory, while the remaining 20 trillion Won is earmarked for the P&T7 facility to expand advanced chip packaging capabilities.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SK Hynix?
That $64 billion figure is just one piece of an even larger ambition. Medium to long-term, SK Hynix has outlined plans to invest roughly 1,100 trillion Won across sprawling sites in Yongin, Cheongju and a new cluster in the southwest. The Yongin hub alone accounts for 600 trillion Won.
The capital raised from the ADR listing — up to $29.4 billion — will go directly into production expansion, particularly for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The M15X fab, which makes DRAM for HBM applications, is a key focus, along with the growing semiconductor cluster in Yongin.
Supply crunch forecast to deepen
Behind the day-to-day volatility lies a memory market that many analysts see as fundamentally tight. Jefferies Equity Research expects memory chip prices to jump 40-50% in the third quarter of 2026 and another 30-40% in the fourth quarter. TrendForce projects the global memory market will reach $889.3 billion in 2026 and $1.28 trillion in 2027, driven by the shift toward inference-heavy AI workloads that exacerbate the supply deficit.
Market observers believe the shortage could persist into 2027 or even 2028. For SK Hynix, that backdrop makes the timing of its Nasdaq debut particularly advantageous: international investors can now price the stock against global peers, and the additional capital gives the company firepower to lock in market share.
Still nursing wounds from the June peak
Despite Friday’s rally, the stock remains 18.81% below its 52-week high of 2,987,000 Won, set on June 25. The distance from the 52-week low of 491,500 Won struck in October 2025 tells an even starker story of the rally: the shares have climbed 393.39% from that trough.
The 50-day moving average sits at 2,046,220 Won, well below the current price, underscoring how extreme the moves have been over the past two weeks. The 30-day annualised volatility of 114.23% confirms that trading has turned exceptionally nervous. Still, the relative strength index of 51.6 points to a neutral market — neither overbought nor oversold.
Two key events loom: the Nasdaq listing on July 10 and second-quarter results due on July 29. Whether the memory sector can return to the calmer rhythm that characterised most of its rally will likely depend on how these two milestones play out.
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