SK Hynix just pulled off something that would have seemed absurd five years ago: a memory chipmaker generating the kind of IPO frenzy usually reserved for consumer tech darlings. The South Korean company launched American Depositary Receipts on Nasdaq on July 10, raising $26.5 billion and dethroning Alibaba as the largest US listing ever by a foreign company.
Shares opened at a healthy premium, surging 13-14% on the first day and closing near $168 against an offering price of $149. The offering was oversubscribed more than seven times over, with demand reaching approximately $200 billion.
Why a chip company broke IPO records
SK Hynix is the world’s second-largest memory chip manufacturer and a dominant producer of high-bandwidth memory technology. HBM chips are the components that let Nvidia’s GPUs process the enormous datasets that power large language models and other AI applications.
The company issued 177.9 million ADRs under the temporary ticker SKHYV, transitioning to SKHY on July 13. Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan led the underwriting.
