SK Hynix set the final price for its US depositary receipt offering on Thursday, capping a bookbuilding process that drew orders more than seven times the shares on offer and positioned the deal as the second-largest US listing by a foreign company in history. The offering targets approximately $28 billion, with 177.9 million ADRs priced at roughly $165.26 each, representing one-tenth of a Korean common share. Interim trading begins Friday on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol SKHY, with regular trading commencing Monday.
The scale of investor demand reflects the strategic position SK Hynix occupies in the artificial intelligence supply chain. The company commands approximately 58% of the global high-bandwidth memory market, the specialized chip stacks that sit alongside Nvidia's AI accelerators in data centers. Its HBM order book is effectively sold out through 2026, and analysts at KB Securities have projected the stock could eventually reach the equivalent of $2,480 per share as AI agent computing expands from cloud data centers to edge devices including PCs and mobile hardware.
Cornerstone investors signaled their commitments ahead of pricing, with Baillie Gifford Overseas, funds managed by Coatue Management, and Situational Awareness Partners collectively indicating interest in purchasing up to $7 billion of the ADRs. Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and nine additional financial institutions served as joint lead underwriters for the transaction.
The listing structure is meaningful for US investors. Each ADR represents one-tenth of a Korean common share, converting what is otherwise a multi-million-won per-share Korean stock into a US-dollar-denominated instrument accessible through any standard US brokerage account. Until now, the primary pure-play US-listed AI memory investment has been Micron Technology, which holds roughly a 21% share of the HBM market. SK Hynix's arrival as a directly investable name on a US exchange gives institutional and retail investors a direct route into the market's dominant HBM supplier, a position that Micron's own management has acknowledged it trails significantly in the most advanced HBM4 qualifications.
SK Hynix Chairman Chey Tae-won is expected to ring the opening bell at Nasdaq on Friday alongside CEO Kwak Noh-jung, with plans to meet executives at major US technology companies during the trip. Chey has previously met Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in Silicon Valley and in South Korea, and the listing is being framed internally as a transition from commodity memory supplier to a strategic AI infrastructure partner for the world's largest technology companies.
The proceeds of the offering are earmarked for capital-intensive manufacturing expansion. Funds will flow to the construction of Phase 1 of the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster wafer fabrication facility, the Cheongju P&T7 advanced packaging plant, and equipment investments including ASML extreme ultraviolet lithography scanners. GraniteShares has filed plans to launch 2x leveraged long and short single-stock ETFs on SKHY starting July 13, giving active traders additional instruments to express directional views on SK Hynix's US performance from its first week of trading.
Analysts noted that the primary near-term variable for SKHY's early trading performance is the geopolitical backdrop. SK Hynix's Korean-listed shares had already pulled back roughly 30% from their June record high of 2.99 million won before the ADR was priced, a correction that observers attributed to both a broader semiconductor sector cooldown and concern that the conflict-driven macro environment could weigh on data center spending, even though hyperscaler capital expenditure commitments have remained robust.