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SK Hynix Overtakes Samsung as South Korea’s Most Valuable Listed Company

Surging demand for high‑bandwidth memory for AI and a confidential U.S. ADR filing are reshaping the company’s capital access while testing its factory expansion and yield plans.

Overview

  • SK Hynix briefly moved ahead of Samsung in intraday trading on Monday, June 22, 2026, with a market value near 2,082.5 trillion won (about $1.35 trillion) based on ordinary shares.
  • The stock rally this year — more than 340% year‑to‑date — is tied to SK Hynix’s leading position in high‑bandwidth memory (HBM), the stacked DRAM used inside AI accelerators from customers such as Nvidia and Google.
  • The company has started shipping 12‑layer HBM4E samples to major customers, a product step that supports higher performance and better power efficiency for AI training and inference workloads.
  • SK Hynix has filed confidentially with the U.S. SEC and is lining up major banks for an American depositary receipt listing on Nasdaq, a move that could broaden U.S. investor access and raise funds for multi‑fab expansion.
  • Analysts warn the valuation rerating depends on execution: factory builds, wafer yields, competitive HBM ramps from Samsung and Micron, and the memory cycle all pose material risks to growth and margins.