SK Hynix’s jumbo share sale is a sign of AI exuberance

Financial Times Europe10 Jul 2026

South Korea dom in ates the mar ket for memory chips — but it’s the US that is theland of cap ital-rais ing oppor tun ity. Korean group SK Hynix has turned to New Yorkfor its sale this week of around $28bn in Amer ican depos it ary receipts. The pro -ceeds will help fund its enorm ous AI-related invest ment plans. And the price atwhich the ADRs trade will be a use ful gauge of how exuber ant the AI land scape hasbecome.

The deal is the biggest-ever share sale in the US by a for eign com pany, sur pass ingAlibaba’s $25bn float in 2014. The sale size, as well as some jit ters about the rush ofAI-related invest ment, have con trib uted to a roughly one-quarter fall in the chip -maker’s Seoul shares in the past fort night. AI believ ers may shrug: the stock hasbeen swinging wildly for months, hav ing moved over 5 per cent in either dir ec tionon 50 occa sions this year — and has still man aged to climb 180 per cent.

Investor demand for the US sale has been hot. Bids for the shares topped theamount on offer soon after the deal launched. In a sign of high demand among act -ive traders, sev eral fund man agers have already sought approval for lever agedproducts that amp lify returns from the ADRs’ daily moves.

Enthu si asm, too, could stem from long-term investors think ing that the Koreanmemory group looks cheap com pared with homegrown chip cham pi ons. Accord ingto Vis ible Alpha, US peer Micron trades on six times its fore cast earn ings for 2028 —the year ana lysts gen er ally expect rev enue from the cur rent boom to peak — whilein Seoul, SK Hynix and its crosstown rival Sam sung Elec tron ics are each on a mul -tiple of four.

That gap is unlikely to nar row as a res ult of the US shares. SK Hynix’s deal is big,but it rep res ents less than 3 per cent of a $977bn mar ket value. Both Koreans suf ferfrom their size: com bined they account for just over half of South Korea’s entiremar ket cap it al isa tion. Big investors’ lim its on con cen tra tion mean they can’t usu allyhold enough of either com pany’s equity to fully reflect that heft.

In the ory, SK Hynix’s US and Korean shares should trade at the same value, butprac tice sug gests oth er wise. Fel low chip boom bene fi ciary TSMC is the standoutexample. Typ ic ally, an ADR would trade no more than 5 per cent above or belowthe under ly ing stock, accord ing to Gold man Sachs ana lysts. Some fric tion comesfrom exchange rates, local exchange rules and costs, and timezone dif fer ences. Therest should, in the ory, be arbit raged away.

Yet the Taiwan titan’s US secur it ies, worth about a fifth of its $2tn mar ket value,have per sist ently traded above its homet own stock and often by 20 per cent ormore in the past three years. The option to swap its US

ADRs for shares in Taipei, but not vice versa, is one reason. Another is that US trad -ing is also more liquid. Like TSMC, SK Hynix is likely to be quickly included in mul -tiple indices, sup port ing demand for the ADRs.

Per haps it will be some com fort to those with longer time hori zons that mar ketanom alies don’t last for ever: TSMC’s premium reached sim ilar peaks in 2009 assmart phone demand boomed, but two years later, shrank to zero.

SK Hynix’s new US stock might be bet ter as a means of meas ur ing the AI craze than