SKHX Down 9.84% While IBK Doubles Its SK Hynix Target to 4 Million Won

The Overnight Chip Rout

The move isn't SK Hynix-specific. Overnight in the US, semiconductors sold off after Meta's push into cloud infrastructure spooked AI-adjacent names, and memory took the worst of it — Micron and SanDisk each fell more than 10%. That rolled straight into Seoul, where Samsung and SK Hynix opened sharply lower and dragged the Kospi down, given how heavily the index leans on the two chipmakers. SK Hynix opened off roughly 9% and slid toward the 2.3 million won area intraday. At ~$1,488, the SKHX perp is down 9.84% on the day but sitting a touch above the worst of the Seoul print.

Brokers Are Buying What the Tape Is Selling

Here's the part worth paying attention to: while the tape dumped, the sell side did the opposite. IBK Securities doubled its SK Hynix target to 4 million won from 1.8 million and kept its buy rating, with analyst Kim Woon-ho arguing the market is 'excessively underestimating memory demand.' His case: 11 consecutive earnings surprises since HBM adoption accelerated in Q4 2023, and a stock trading around 8x forward earnings — cheap next to AI-equipment peers. Yuanta lifted its call on SK Square, which owns roughly 20.5% of SK Hynix, to 2.1 million won. The read across both desks is that this is profit-taking after an enormous run, not evidence that AI-driven memory demand is actually cracking.

A Week Before the Biggest ADR on Record

Timing makes this more than a routine drawdown. SK Hynix is days away from a Nasdaq ADR listing that could raise around $29 billion — 17.79 million new shares, up to 45.45 trillion won — with trading tentatively set to begin July 10, subject to SEC review. If it prices near the top of the range it would be the largest ADR offering on record, surpassing Alibaba's $21.8 billion 2014 debut, with proceeds earmarked for memory-capacity expansion including the Yongin fab and advanced packaging. Selling into weakness a week before bookbuilding is awkward: a softer reference price can trim the raise, and the schedule itself is still labeled tentative.

What the Perp Actually Tracks

One structural note for anyone trading the perp rather than the equity: SKHX tracks a single SK Hynix share, with the underlying KRW price converted to USD at the prevailing USD/KRW rate. That means you carry both the equity move and won-dollar FX, and the perp prices continuously while the Seoul listing only trades during Korean hours — so basis against spot can open up around gaps and overnight US sessions like this one. Liquidity has been there to trade it: roughly $685 million changed hands on the SKHX market over the past 24 hours.