SKHX Rebounds as SK Hynix Commits KRW 100 Trillion to NAND Days Before Nasdaq Debut

SK Hynix Doubles Down on NAND

The concrete new catalyst is a capex flag planted directly into the wreckage. On July 2, at a national briefing on advanced-industry development in the Chungcheong region, CEO Kwak Noh-Jung unveiled a KRW 100 trillion Cheongju investment: KRW 80 trillion for a new M17 NAND fabrication plant and KRW 20 trillion for the P&T7 advanced packaging facility. Construction on M17 begins in 2027 with operations targeted for the first half of 2029, while P&T7 is slated for completion by the end of 2027.

Kwak's rationale, per SK Hynix's official announcement, is that agentic and physical AI are broadening NAND applications even as "NAND supply is constrained." The timing is the signal. Committing nine figures of won to new NAND lines on the exact day the stock is being sold as an oversupply casualty is management telling the tape it disagrees with the tape.

Rebounding From the Meta Shock

One session earlier, SK Hynix was the epicenter of the selloff. The KOSPI plunged 7.89% to 7,648 in the 'Meta shock,' with SK Hynix down 14.57% and the broader market shedding 569 trillion won in a single day. The trigger was Meta's move into the cloud business, which reignited fears over AI capex, memory oversupply, and downstream profitability. Foreign investors, already in sell mode for ten straight sessions, net-sold more than 5 trillion won of KOSPI stock that day.

SKHX tracked the flush and is now retracing it, up 11.69% over four hours to roughly $1,538 as Korean chip names catch a bargain-hunting bid. Sell-side leaned into the dip rather than away from it: IBK Investment lifted its SK Hynix target to 4 million won and NH raised its to 4.1 million won even as the stock was falling. That combination — record foreign selling absorbed by retail, plus rising targets — reads more like a positioning flush unwinding than a fundamentals reset.

A Record Listing, Days Away

All of this sits under a hard deadline. SK Hynix is preparing a roughly $29 billion Nasdaq ADR listing — 17.79 million new shares, with each common share represented by 10 ADRs — that would be the largest ADR offering ever, eclipsing Alibaba's 2014 debut and Saudi Aramco's 2019 IPO. The company targets a Nasdaq Global Select Market listing as soon as July 10, though it has flagged the dates as tentative.

Every dollar of proceeds is earmarked for AI-memory capex, according to Reuters, with the raise going toward advanced memory fabs and EUV tool orders. Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan are running the book. The Cheongju announcement and the listing are the same story told twice: SK Hynix is funding an AI-memory buildout at scale and wants Western capital priced in before the shares start trading.

Reading the Perp

SKHX is not the Korean spot line — it is an oracle that converts one share of SK Hynix common from KRW to USD at the prevailing FX rate. Two things follow. First, the perp trades around the clock while Seoul has fixed hours, so it can front-run or diverge from the next KOSPI session and often gaps to reflect overnight sentiment before the cash market reopens. Second, the USD/KRW rate feeds directly into the print, so a won move can push the perp even when the underlying share is flat.

Volume argues this is a real market, not a ghost book: this Hyperliquid perp turned over about $907 million in the last 24 hours. With the capex news and the listing clustered into the same week, expect the perp to stay reactive to Seoul reopens, ADR pricing headlines, and the won — and to move faster than the underlying while it does.