Up 7.32% from Previous Day... Closes at 278,500 Won
Intraday High of 283,000 Won Sets New 52-Week Record
Market Cap Reaches 202.7487 Trillion Won, Surpassing 200 Trillion
Solid Dominance in HBM Market... Middle East Ceasefire Also a Factor
Chey Taewon's Steadfast Investment Pays Off
Market Cap Has Continued to Rise from 13 Trillion Won Before SK Group Acquisition
Secures Position as Leading AI Memory Company
Enhancing Competitiveness Through R&D and Future Production Base Investments
On June 24, SK Hynix's market capitalization surpassed 200 trillion won for the first time since the company's founding. This is a landmark achievement that comes approximately one year and six months after SK Hynix CEO Kwak Nohjung announced the company's goal of reaching a market capitalization of 200 trillion won at 'CES 2024' held early last year.
On this day, SK Hynix closed at 278,500 won, up 7.32% from the previous day. During the session, the stock price rose as high as 283,000 won, setting a new 52-week high. As of the market close, SK Hynix's market capitalization stood at 202.7487 trillion won, surpassing 200 trillion won for the first time in its history. Compared to the end of last year (126.6 trillion won), this represents an increase of more than 70 trillion won in just six months.
Previously, at CES last year, CEO Kwak stated, "If we prepare and develop our technology well, ensure our products are ready, and maximize investment efficiency while further improving our financial soundness, I believe our market capitalization, currently around 100 trillion won, can reach a much better level." He added, "Internally, we see 200 trillion won as a goal worth pursuing within about three years." This goal has now become a reality.
After joining the SK Group in 2012, SK Hynix's market capitalization, which was about 13 trillion won just before the acquisition in 2011, steadily increased and surpassed 100 trillion won in January 2021. In March of the same year, it reached 110 trillion won, but then fell to the 55 trillion won range in March 2023 due to a downturn in the memory market.
Since then, SK Hynix has focused on product and technology development, shifting its portfolio toward high value-added products such as HBM. As a result, the company succeeded in establishing itself as a leading provider of AI memory, accelerating its corporate value growth.
The record-high market capitalization reached on this day is seen as the result of growing expectations for a recovery in the semiconductor market, as well as SK Hynix maintaining its dominance in the next-generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) market. The announcement of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Iran, which has reduced uncertainty stemming from the United States, is also considered a significant factor.
SK Hynix's growth is also attributed to the steadfast investment of SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, who acquired the company for 3.4267 trillion won despite opposition from those around him.
At the time of the acquisition, Chairman Chey emphasized, "Anyone can pursue mergers and acquisitions (M&A) or investments, but to expect greater returns, you need technology." He added, "Technology and research and development (R&D) are our hope and our future, so we must establish ourselves as a technology-driven company that commercializes technology to produce global products."
After the acquisition, the company made large-scale investments across all areas, including HBM. Based on these efforts, SK Hynix became the first in the world to introduce HBM to the market in 2013, and has since continued to develop and mass-produce world-class new products in the HBM sector. In June 2022, the company became the first in the world to mass-produce HBM3, supplying it to major AI player Nvidia. In April 2023, SK Hynix succeeded in developing the world's first 12-layer stacked HBM3, which offers 50% more capacity than the previous 8-layer HBM3.
Currently, SK Hynix is supplying the fifth-generation HBM3E to Nvidia, and has already sold out this year's supply. To maintain its market leadership with the next-generation HBM4, the company supplied HBM4 samples to major customers, including Nvidia, in March, and is aiming for mass production in the second half of this year. In the first quarter of this year, SK Hynix overtook Samsung Electronics to become number one in the global DRAM market.
SK Hynix is striving to further strengthen its competitiveness through active R&D investment and preemptive investment in future production bases.
In August last year, the company succeeded in developing a 16-gigabit (Gb) DDR5 DRAM using the world's first 10-nanometer-class sixth-generation 1c process. In the NAND sector, SK Hynix began mass production of the world's tallest 321-layer 1-terabit (Tb) TLC 4D NAND flash in November last year, breaking through technological barriers.
In Yongin, Gyeonggi-do, SK Hynix is investing a total of 120 trillion won to establish the new Yongin Semiconductor Cluster as a memory production base. To proactively respond to AI memory semiconductor demand, the company has also decided to make new investments in the M15X facility at the Cheongju campus. M15X is scheduled for completion in November and will begin full-scale mass production next year. In addition, the company is building its seventh domestic semiconductor back-end processing facility in Cheongju.
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