SK Hynix’s 41% Slide Masks a Half-Year Profit That Could Top 100 Trillion Won
Published on 07/26/2026 at 12:52 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The numbers coming out of SK Hynix this week are almost too contradictory to reconcile. On one side sits a potential half-year operating profit exceeding 100 trillion won, a record-breaking Nvidia supply pact worth 750 billion dollars, and an ADR listing that raised 26.5 billion dollars in a single day. On the other sits a stock that has shed 41 percent of its value in just over a month, closing Friday at 1,759,000 won after a 3.88 percent daily loss that one source pegs as high as 8.34 percent depending on the session measured.
The disconnect has created one of the most polarized setups in Asian equities this year. And it all comes to a head on July 29, when the memory-chip giant reports second-quarter earnings.
The Nvidia Deal That Couldn’t Save Friday
News of the agreement with Nvidia broke over the weekend, confirmed by a senior adviser to South Korean President Lee Jae-myung during a visit to San Francisco. The five-year cooperation covers high-bandwidth memory chips and advanced AI semiconductors, with SK Hynix’s portion valued at an estimated 750 billion dollars. The broader alliance involving OpenAI and Anthropic pushes the total to 950 billion dollars. President Lee and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang personally negotiated the terms.
Yet the announcement arrived too late to arrest the selling pressure that had already hammered the stock. Three forces collided on Friday. Alphabet’s quarterly report triggered sector-wide profit-taking in AI names, dragging the entire semiconductor complex lower. A Seoul court ruling ordered SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won to pay a divorce settlement approaching one billion dollars, reigniting governance concerns. And the approaching July 29 conversion window for the company’s Nasdaq-listed ADRs — which currently trade at a 30 percent premium to the Seoul-listed ordinary shares — is mechanically compressing that spread, adding to selling pressure in the domestic market.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SK Hynix?
A Half-Year Profit Milestone
The earnings numbers themselves tell a different story. Fourteen major brokerages have compiled their forecasts into a consensus: second-quarter revenue of 84.1 trillion won and operating profit of 64.1 trillion won. If those figures materialize, SK Hynix’s first-half operating profit for fiscal 2026 will surpass 100 trillion won for the first time in its history.
The driver is unmistakable. Demand for HBM4-generation high-bandwidth memory chips remains insatiable, and contract prices for standard DRAM rose more than 50 percent last quarter. The company is operating from a position of genuine pricing power — rare in the notoriously cyclical memory market.
Management has also been shifting production capacity. Lines originally earmarked for HBM4 are being redirected toward DDR5 manufacturing, responding to acute supply shortages in the mainstream DRAM market. Margins on DDR5 are approaching 90 percent, and analysts view the move as a deliberate optimization play — capturing additional profit without overextending capacity in the increasingly contested HBM segment.
Technical Signals and the Week Ahead
The chart presents a study in extremes. From the 52-week high of 2,987,000 won on June 25, the stock has fallen 41.11 percent. Even so, the year-to-date gain stands at 170.74 percent. The 14-day relative strength index sits at 40.1, edging toward oversold territory just ahead of the most consequential earnings report the company has faced.
Investors are focused on two questions that Wednesday’s release will address. First, whether management’s outlook confirms the revenue trajectory implied by the Nvidia pact. Second, how concrete the board’s plans are for the 26.5-billion-dollar investment program in next-generation production facilities, including the semiconductor cluster in Yongin and sampling timelines for the upcoming HBM4E generation.
SK Hynix at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
The ADR arbitrage dynamic adds a layer of complexity. A South Korean regulatory cap limits conversion of local shares into ADRs to 2.5 percent of total shares outstanding, making it difficult to close the 30 percent premium through traditional arbitrage. That premium has already begun to compress ahead of the July 29 window opening, and further pressure on the Seoul-listed stock is likely until the mechanism fully resets.
Wednesday’s report will test whether the fundamental story — record profits, a historic customer agreement, and pricing power in the most sought-after memory products — can outweigh the technical and governance headwinds that have driven the stock down by nearly a third in a single month.
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SK Hynix Stock: New Analysis - 26 July
Fresh SK Hynix information released. What's the impact for investors? Our latest independent report examines recent figures and market trends.
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