SKHX Climbs as SK Hynix Overtakes Samsung as Korea's Most Valuable Company

Samsung Loses the Crown

SKHX's 15.40% climb to about $1,892 lands in the middle of a genuinely historic week for SK Hynix. On Monday, June 22, the company overtook Samsung Electronics to become South Korea's most valuable listed company — the first time Samsung has surrendered the top spot on the KOSPI since November 2000. SK Hynix shares closed up 5.6% in Seoul that day to lift its market value to roughly 2,080 trillion won, or about $1.35 trillion, edging past Samsung's 2,066.7 trillion won. The stock printed an all-time high of ₩2,945,000 in the same stretch, after a rally of more than 340% on the year.

There's a real asterisk worth knowing as a trader: Samsung disputes the ranking, telling Reuters its market cap should include preferred shares, which would lift its value to 2,246.4 trillion won and put it back on top. On a common-stock basis, though, the handoff is real — and it's the cleanest single signal of how far the AI memory cycle has bent the Korean tech hierarchy.

It's All HBM

This isn't a diversified-chipmaker story. The re-rating runs almost entirely on high-bandwidth memory, where SK Hynix held roughly 61% of the global market in 2025 versus Micron's 21% and Samsung's 17% — the stacked DRAM that Nvidia's AI accelerators depend on. That concentration is why a competitor's print moves the leader: Micron's latest fiscal quarter guided HBM capacity sold out through 2026 and showed DRAM contract prices up sharply quarter-over-quarter, and SK Hynix popped on the read-through alongside the listing news.

The $29 billion Nasdaq raise filed June 24 fits the same thesis. Management is funding capacity into demand it already can't fully meet, not papering over weakness — the market read it as a demand signal, not dilution. At that size the deal would eclipse Alibaba's 2014 debut and Saudi Aramco's 2019 IPO, but it's the supply position behind it that's doing the work in the tape.

What the Perp Is Actually Tracking

One thing to keep straight if you're trading SKHX into this: the perp references the Seoul-listed common in [KRW](/movers/krw) converted to USD — not the record $29 billion Nasdaq ADR that begins trading July 10. Each common share will be represented by ten ADRs, so the eventual U.S. listing and this perp will quote at very different absolute prices and won't move tick-for-tick.

Because the oracle layers a USD/KRW conversion on top of the Korean tape, part of SKHX's path reflects FX, and the perp can drift from the underlying when Seoul is closed or the won moves. With about $420.7 million in 24-hour HIP-3 volume, there's enough depth to express a view, but the 15.40% over ten hours is continuation off a record high into a crowded, well-told story — the easy part of the re-rating is already on the board.