Shares of South Korean chip big SK hynix soared on its Wall Street debut on Friday (Jul 10) after one of the world’s largest share sales at US$26.5 billion, underscoring robust investor urge for food for companies on the centre of the factitious intelligence increase.
It marks the biggest US itemizing by a international firm, beating out the US$21.8 billion raised by Chinese language tech agency Alibaba in its New York preliminary public providing.
However SK hynix’s rise to the highest of the semiconductor trade was something however clean.
In one of many largest turnarounds in South Korea’s company historical past, the corporate has rebounded from the brink of collapse to grow to be one of many world’s most useful semiconductor companies as we speak.
FROM CRISIS TO COMEBACK
Based in 1983 as Hyundai Electronics, the corporate went by a collection of crises and possession modifications earlier than ultimately turning into SK hynix.
It got here near chapter in 2001 as international chip costs plunged, surviving solely after a bailout by creditor banks, led by state lenders.
Later, burdened by debt following aggressive enlargement, it was at one level almost offered to US-based Micron. The deal fell by, leaving the agency underneath creditor management for almost a decade.
By 2003, its shares plunged to as little as 135 received (US$0.09), incomes it the label of a penny inventory in South Korea.
A turning level got here in 2012, when telecoms conglomerate SK Group acquired the corporate and renamed it SK hynix.
The acquisition was broadly seen as dangerous on the time, with Samsung valued at greater than 10 instances its measurement. Nevertheless it laid the inspiration for SK hynix’s eventual rise.
However the deal laid the inspiration for SK hynix’s eventual rise.
Relatively than competing head-on with Samsung in standard reminiscence chips, SK hynix targeted on carving out an edge.
It positioned an early guess on high-bandwidth reminiscence chips (HBM) – a then-niche expertise designed to course of knowledge at a lot quicker speeds however was not broadly utilized by knowledge centre prospects.
“We believed that it will be not possible to beat Samsung in commodity Dynamic Random-Entry Reminiscence (DRAM) merchandise,” former SK hynix HR govt Hyun Solar-yeop mentioned.
“We have been determined to alter the market dynamics. We wanted a breakthrough.”
That breakthrough got here within the type of HBM chips, which might later show important to AI computing.
They helped SK hynix recuperate from the worldwide reminiscence trade’s boom-and-bust cycle a lot quicker than Samsung, and soar to record profits.
It even overtook Samsung because the world’s high DRAM maker in 2025.
“Nobody would ever have imagined that SK hynix would overtake Samsung,” mentioned Shin Jae-yong, a enterprise administration professor at Seoul Nationwide College.
“It’s virtually not possible for a runner-up to meet up with the market chief on this capital-intensive trade, which requires large funding. HBM was the highly effective driver behind how they turned the tables.”
