SK Hynix's 2027 HBM4 Supply Is Already Spoken For — But the Share Price Is Still Fighting Its Own Shadow
Published on 08/13/2026 at 08:10 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The most telling number in SK Hynix's current story isn't in today's trading data. It's the price tag attached to memory chips that won't ship for another two years. Reports citing Cantor Fitzgerald indicate the company's HBM4 capacity for 2027 is effectively sold out, with Nvidia paying around $32 per gigabyte, Broadcom $36, and AMD $40. That pricing ladder — three marquee AI-chip buyers, three distinct price points — points to structural scarcity rather than one-off negotiation wins.
Investors have been slower to catch on. The stock jumped 7.4% on Thursday to 1,616,000 won, following an 8.1% weekly gain, yet the 30-day picture still shows a 16% decline and the shares remain 21% below their 50-day moving average. The gap between the daily pop and the medium-term trend suggests the market is only now, with a lag, starting to price in HBM4 pricing discipline. The stock still sits roughly half below its 52-week high of 2,987,000 won.
Thursday's move was part of a broader risk-on session across Asian tech. The Kospi climbed as much as 4.8% to 6,895 points, recovering about 22% in ten trading days from its July trough of 5,262.77. Foreign investors turned net buyers after heavy selling in June and July, while domestic retail investors largely took profits — a pattern repeated across several Korean trading desks that day. The US-listed ADR had already surged about 9% on Wednesday to close at $141.65, with peers like SanDisk, Micron, and Western Digital also posting double-digit daily gains.
The rally drew fuel from multiple sources. A report floated the possibility of Temasek making direct investments in Samsung and SK Hynix, though the sovereign fund itself clarified that no new agreements exist and that it has held stakes in both companies for over two years without coordinating with the Korean government. Meanwhile, US inflation data came in as expected — July consumer prices rose 3.4% year over year, with core at 2.5% — lifting the odds of a September Fed pause to roughly 60% and giving global tech stocks a tailwind.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SK Hynix?
Behind the trading noise, SK Hynix's operational story has been building quietly. The company confirmed mass production of HBM4 at the end of July, following successful customer qualification in the second quarter. Early August brought its "full-stack" portfolio showcase at the Future of Memory and Storage trade fair, including physical samples of the 16-layer 48GB HBM4 and a 375-layer 4D-NAND product using wafer-bonding technology. The board also approved 54 trillion won in investments for two new fabs — 35.2 trillion won for the "Y2" facility in Yongin and 19.1 trillion won for "M17" in Cheongju. If 2027 capacity is indeed presold at premium prices, that capital outlay looks like a logical response rather than a gamble.
Analyst targets reflect the uncertainty around just how large the HBM premium will be. RBC Capital initiated coverage on August 11 with an "Outperform" rating and a $200 target, Stifel followed with "Buy" and $240, while Cantor Fitzgerald had already set a $300 target earlier in the month. Daishin Securities, for its part, projects annual shareholder returns of at least 80 trillion won for SK Hynix, citing expected server-DRAM demand growth of around 50% year over year in 2026. Details on the payout plan are due in the third quarter.
Not everything is clean. On August 10, SK Hynix had to tell the Korean exchange that no decision had been made on selling its Chongqing packaging plant for roughly 4 trillion won, tamping down speculation that had been circulating. The China exit remains an unresolved overhang on an otherwise straightforward AI narrative.
Year to date, the stock is still up 149%, and the valuation case remains striking: SK Hynix trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of around 3.6, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index commands more than six times that. That discrepancy helps explain why global funds have been rotating back into Korean chip names.
The July correction — a 47% drawdown from peak — followed by this week's rebound looks less like a trend reversal and more like a market wrestling with a story that keeps outrunning its valuation models. The China question is real and shouldn't be waved away. But the HBM4 pricing data is the stronger signal: a supplier that has sold its 2027 output at premium prices before most analysts have updated their models is not negotiating from weakness.
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