SK Hynix just pulled off something no foreign company has done before. The South Korean memory chipmaker priced its American depositary receipts at $149 each on July 9, setting the stage for what’s shaping up to be the largest ADR listing in history.
The offering of approximately 177.9 million ADRs is expected to raise around $26.5 billion. For context, that blows past Alibaba’s 2014 IPO record of $25 billion, which held the crown for over a decade. Trading kicks off on Nasdaq under the ticker ‘SKHY’ on July 10.
Why Wall Street is fighting over memory chips
The demand here was genuinely staggering. The offering was more than seven times oversubscribed, with global long-only funds, sovereign wealth funds, and technology-focused investors all scrambling for allocations.
The $149 price represents a 3.1% premium over SK Hynix’s last closing price on the Korea Exchange. Each ADR represents one-tenth of a common share, a structure designed to keep the per-unit price accessible for US retail investors. The company initially filed its SEC registration in late June with a reference price of 242,500 won per ADR.
