SK Hynix Marks Record-Setting U.S. Debut Today
South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix will begin trading on the Nasdaq on Friday, after completing the largest U.S. share sale ever by a foreign company, marking the third-largest debut on record following SpaceX’s record-setting listing last month.
SK Hynix disclosed in a filing Thursday it would issue 177.9 million American depository receipts (ADRs), or certificates representing ownership of shares in a foreign company, priced at $149 each under the ticker “SKHYV.”
One common share will be represented by 10 ADRs, priced at $1,490—and that’s slightly higher than the company’s Seoul-based listing, which ended Friday at about $1,450.
SK Hynix raised $26.51 billion through its ADR offering, the company disclosed, making it the largest U.S. share sale ever by a foreign company and the third-largest ever, trailing Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion in 2019 and SpaceX’s $85.7 billion.
The funds raised will go toward expanding SK Hynix’s chipmaking facilities and purchasing advanced equipment, the company disclosed.
Investors sought more than seven times the available number of shares in SK Hynix’s U.S. offering, Reuters reported.
$1 trillion. That’s SK Hynix’s market value as of Friday, ranking the company as South Korea’s second-largest firm behind Samsung ($1.2 trillion) and the third-largest memory chipmaker globally. SK Hynix’s stock has already skyrocketed by 222% in South Korea this year, quickly raising its market capitalization from just over $250 billion in December to above $1 trillion for the first time in May.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly pressed Samsung and SK Hynix to ramp up memory chip production in the U.S. amid a global shortage. Lutnick, speaking to Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, noted he wanted to bring Mehrotra’s competitors “here to America to build,” but noted, “Micron’s leading the way, and now the others are going to be jealous, right? And they’re going to have to follow.” SK Hynix has already planned its build-up in the U.S., including a $4 billion plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, that will be used for advanced packaging.
SK Hynix, founded in 1983 as a subsidiary of Hyundai, has made headlines this year as booming AI demand has constricted the global memory chip trade. The company has become the leader in high-performance memory used in AI chips from Nvidia, and SK Hynix disclosed it holds just over 56% of the global high-bandwidth memory market. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang praised SK Hynix last month, adding that the company would continue to be Nvidia’s largest partner, as a memory chip shortage is likely to persist for a few years.