SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker, is planning to raise up to $29.4 billion through an American depositary receipt listing on Nasdaq. If the deal goes through as planned, it would be the largest share sale by a foreign company on a US exchange, ever.
The South Korean semiconductor giant announced on June 24 that it will issue up to 17.79 million new shares, with each common share represented by 10 ADRs priced initially around $166 each. Trading is expected to begin on July 10.
Where the money is going
SK Hynix plans to funnel the proceeds into new fabrication plants in Yongin, advanced packaging facilities in Cheongju, and the acquisition of extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment. All of this is designed to ramp up production of high-bandwidth memory, the specialized chips that make Nvidia’s GPUs actually useful for AI workloads.
This listing is actually the second attempt at tapping US capital markets, and a significantly more ambitious one. Back in March, SK Hynix had floated a plan to raise somewhere between $9.6 billion and $14.4 billion in the second half of the year.
