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SK Hynix prices $28 billion Nasdaq ADR offering on July 10, the largest-ever US listing by a foreign company

· by Pondero Newsdesk

The short version

SK Hynix begins trading on Nasdaq Friday under ticker SKHY, raising $28 billion through American depositary receipts to fund new HBM fabs at a moment when its stock is up 260% year-to-date on AI memory demand.

SK Hynix prices $28 billion Nasdaq ADR offering on July 10, the largest-ever US listing by a foreign company

SK Hynix kicked off its Nasdaq roadshow on July 6, seeking $28.21 billion through American depositary receipts priced at roughly $165 per ADR, with trading set for July 10 under ticker SKHY. The deal, trimmed from an earlier $29 billion target after its Seoul shares pulled back 3.4%, still ranks as the largest-ever US listing by a foreign company, surpassing Alibaba's $21.8 billion New York debut in 2014 per TechTimes.

What

SK Hynix filed an F-1/A registration with the SEC on July 7 to offer 17.79 million new shares as ADRs. Each ADR represents one-tenth of a common share. The reference price for the offering was set at 242,500 won per ADR, based on the Seoul close on July 3, per Quartz. Final pricing is expected Thursday; trading begins Friday.

The fundraise is entirely earmarked for manufacturing capacity, not general corporate purposes. SK Hynix named three uses: building the first wafer fab (Y1) at the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster in South Korea, equipping the Cheongju P&T7 advanced-packaging fab for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production, and purchasing ASML extreme-ultraviolet lithography scanners per TechTimes.

Cornerstone investors, including Baillie Gifford, Coatue Management, and Situational Awareness Partners, expressed interest in buying up to $7 billion of the ADRs, per Quartz. BofA Securities, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan are serving as global coordinators.

Why it matters

SK Hynix holds roughly 57% of global HBM revenue, per Counterpoint Research data cited by Bloomberg as of Q4 2025. HBM is the stacked memory that feeds Nvidia and Google AI accelerators, and it is where both the shortage and the margins sit right now. A Nasdaq listing adds SK Hynix to the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index benchmark universe, which passive funds globally track. Analysts cited by The Wall Street Journal noted this could also shrink the valuation gap between SK Hynix and Micron, which has risen nearly 700% over the past year per TechCrunch.

For AI tool operators who depend on GPU compute, the supply-chain angle is direct. SK Hynix's HBM3E supplies go into Nvidia H100 and H200 chips. Its stock is up about 260% year-to-date, and its Q1 2026 revenues rose nearly 200% over the same quarter a year earlier, per TechCrunch. The company becoming easily buyable on Nasdaq gives US institutional capital a direct path into the AI memory supply chain, not just the model-layer companies.

The offering is a bet placed at peak valuation. HBM capacity for 2026 is sold out, with shortages forecast into 2027, but the facilities being funded now will come online in 2027 and beyond. If AI compute demand continues expanding, the capacity bet pays off. If the market softens before those fabs are built and staffed, SK Hynix will have raised a record sum to build infrastructure for demand that may have shifted.

What to watch next

Pricing on Thursday will set the final ADR count and total raised. If SKHY opens above its reference price on Friday, that signals strong institutional demand for the AI memory thesis at this valuation. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index committee meets quarterly, so SKHY inclusion would be the next structural catalyst for passive fund buying. SK Hynix's Indiana packaging plant, a $4 billion facility being built on US soil, is a separate watch item for operators tracking AI supply-chain geopolitics.

Sources