SKC's Market Cap Increases by 1.7 Trillion Won in One Month, Glass Substrate 'Magic'

Stock Price Rises 50% Since 10th Last Month... Market Cap Surpasses 5 Trillion Won
Domestic Institutional Investors Net Buy 41.4 Billion Won Driving Stock Price Increase
Glass Substrate Physical Exhibit at 'CES 2025'

The stock price of SKC, the intermediate holding company of SK Group, has been rapidly rising over the past month. Amid the growth of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry and global information technology (IT) companies rushing to invest in data centers, expectations for the commercialization of the new technology "glass substrate," which can reduce power consumption in data centers, are driving the increase in SKC's stock price.

According to the financial investment industry on the 9th, SKC's stock price rose 49.8% in one month to 135,400 KRW from the closing price of 90,400 KRW on December 9 last year. Compared to the KOSPI's 6.8% increase during the same period, the market-relative return reached 43.0 percentage points (P). The market capitalization grew from 3.42 trillion KRW to 5.13 trillion KRW, an increase of about 1.71 trillion KRW. During this period, domestic institutional investors led the stock price rise with a cumulative net purchase of 41.4 billion KRW.

Absolics, in which SKC holds a 70% stake, has become the world's first to complete a mass production plant for glass substrates in Georgia, USA, and is accelerating commercialization. Last year, recognizing its technological innovation, it secured production subsidies and research and development (R&D) grants of 75 million USD and 100 million USD respectively from the U.S. government. Absolics' technology related to glass substrates is at least three years ahead of competitors.

SKC is exhibiting actual glass substrates in the AI data center (DC) zone at CES 2025, the world's largest IT exhibition held in Las Vegas, USA. They introduced glass substrates as a solution to boost the speed of AI servers that process large-scale data.

Glass substrates allow ultra-fine circuit implementation and can embed various components such as multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) internally, enabling the mounting of high-capacity central processing units (CPU) and graphics processing units (GPU) on the surface. Compared to conventional substrates, data processing speed increases by 40%, while power consumption and package thickness are reduced by more than half. An SKC official stated, "As the world's first semiconductor glass substrate commercialization company, we can demonstrate our technological excellence," adding, "We will solidify our technological superiority through glass substrates amid increasingly fierce semiconductor competition."

Last year, SKC focused intensive investment on its core businesses and withdrew from non-core business areas. The glass substrate business of Absolics was judged to be the driving force that will lead to a fundamental change in SKC's corporate value. Noh Woo-ho, a researcher at Meritz Securities, analyzed, "Demand for high-performance semiconductors is increasing exponentially due to the AI boom," and "The technological bottleneck requiring ultra-high-speed computing power, data processing speed, and power efficiency can be solved by changing substrate materials."

He added, "Absolics receiving subsidies from the U.S. Department of Commerce means it is recognized as a U.S. semiconductor supply chain company," and "It is an acknowledgment of its technological capabilities for next-generation glass substrates."

Demand for glass substrates, which can drastically reduce data center area and power consumption, is expected to grow rapidly. Global big tech companies such as Microsoft are investing large-scale funds to build data centers. The importance of AI technology has increased across the entire industry. Securing high-performance data centers is crucial to capturing the market. Microsoft has planned to invest 80 billion USD this year alone in building AI data centers. Amazon is also considering investments of a similar scale to Microsoft.