Is SK Hynix a better AI memory bet than Micron?

SK Hynix listed American Depositary Receipts on Nasdaq under the ticker SKHY at $149 per ADR, raising about $26.5 billion in an offering the company says was more than seven times oversubscribed and the largest U.S. listing by a foreign firm.

The Icheon, South Korea-based memory maker reported a 56.4% share of the global high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market and is supplying HBM4 for Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin AI platform, according to company filings. Micron Technology holds about 21% of the HBM market and has reported that its HBM capacity is sold out through the end of the year.

The offering gives SK Hynix direct access to U.S. investors and capital markets. Company filings indicate the firm plans to use part of the proceeds to buy extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography tools and to expand advanced packaging facilities, including at the Yongin semiconductor cluster.

In its most recent quarter, SK Hynix reported an operating margin near 72%, driven by sales of enterprise solid-state drives and premium DRAM products. Listing documents show a forward price-to-earnings multiple near 8 times based on market valuation at the time of the IPO.

SK Hynix’s production scale and HBM share correspond with long-term supply agreements the company reports holding with cloud and hyperscale customers. Those contracts are structured to provide multi-year delivery schedules for data-center memory purchases.

Micron remains a major competitor across DRAM, NAND flash and HBM product lines, with different market shares and capacity timelines. Micron has reported high capacity utilization in recent quarters.

Market commentary focuses on how SK Hynix will deploy the IPO proceeds, the timing for new EUV and advanced packaging capacity to come online, and how demand for HBM and other AI-oriented memory products evolves relative to competitors such as Micron.