SK Hynix has set out plans for one of the biggest equity sales in market history, telling investors it intends to raise up to 45.45 trillion won, roughly $29 billion, through a U.S. listing of American depositary receipts on the Nasdaq, with a debut tentatively set for July 10.
An ADR is a U.S.-traded certificate that represents shares in a foreign company, letting American investors buy in with dollars without dealing directly with an overseas exchange. SK Hynix plans to issue 17.79 million new shares to back the receipts. The arrangement is a secondary listing: the company would trade on Nasdaq while keeping its primary listing on South Korea's Kospi, rather than moving its shares wholesale to New York.
A record-setting size
At the top of its indicated range, the offering would surpass the $21.8 billion that Alibaba raised in its 2014 New York debut, making it the largest ADR sale ever, according to Reuters. At that size it would also rank among the largest share sales of any kind in recent years. The ADRs have been priced at 255,500 won, about $166, per share, though final terms are set through book-building shortly before the listing and could shift.
Why now
SK Hynix says it will direct the proceeds toward capacity expansion, led by construction of its Yongin semiconductor cluster south of Seoul, an advanced packaging facility in Cheongju, and chipmaking equipment such as extreme ultraviolet (EUV) scanners. Beyond the cash, the listing is a bid for what the Korea Herald calls an "AI premium" — a chance to be valued by U.S. funds that treat memory as a scarce AI input rather than a cyclical commodity, and to trade on the same screens as rival Micron.
The company in focus
SK Hynix is the dominant supplier of high-bandwidth memory, the stacked DRAM that sits beside Nvidia and other AI accelerators, and has been among the clearest winners of the AI buildout. The company became South Korea's most valuable listed firm this week, overtaking long-time leader Samsung Electronics — a milestone Boursel covered as the high-bandwidth-memory boom reshaped the Kospi pecking order.
Its Korea-listed shares rose about 5.5% in after-hours trading following the announcement, per TradingKey, a sign of investor appetite for the dual-listing strategy. The deal still hinges on regulatory clearance, including U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission review, and the figures above reflect the company's stated targets and indicative pricing — not a completed sale. But if it lands near the top of the range, SK Hynix will have pulled off the largest ADR listing in history to bankroll the next phase of the memory arms race.
