SK Hynix plans to list American Depositary Receipts on Nasdaq, raising up to $29.4 billion - a move that sent its Seoul-listed shares up 15% on June 25. The offering of up to 17.79 million new shares, structured at ten ADRs per common share, will fund semiconductor equipment and factory construction aimed at high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production for AI data centers.
The ADRs are priced off the June 24 Korean closing price of approximately 2.555 million won per share. Bookbuilding begins July 6, with trading expected July 10, 2026.
Market focus has now turned to a single regulatory detail: Will the ADRs be freely convertible into Korea Exchange-listed shares? Arbitrage traders depend on this fungibility to exploit price gaps between the two markets. Without it, the ADRs could trade at a persistent premium or discount.
SK Hynix is the primary HBM supplier to Nvidia, a position that places it at the center of the AI infrastructure build-out. The company’s HBM chips stack memory modules directly atop GPU processors, delivering the speeds demanded by AI workloads.
For US institutional investors, the listing removes access barriers and could help narrow the so-called “Korea discount” that weighs on Seoul-listed stocks. Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology are racing to close the HBM gap, adding competitive risks tied to yields and Nvidia’s buying concentration.