SK Hynix's 80% Margin Ambition Meets a Friday Pullback
Published on 10/10/2026 at 04:01 | Editorial boerse-global.de
A wave of profit-taking swept through South Korea's chip complex to close the week, clipping 2.4% off SK Hynix and leaving the memory giant at KRW 1,681,000.00. The trigger came from crosstown rival Samsung Electronics, whose preliminary record figures gave traders a reason to lock in gains across the semiconductor sector rather than chase the rally further.
Foreign and institutional investors alike trimmed exposure to Korean chipmakers ahead of the weekend, according to media accounts, with the selling pressure landing on the sector's biggest names in roughly equal measure. After months of heady gains, the instinct to protect paper profits simply outweighed the appetite to add.
That pause does little to dent the broader picture. SK Hynix shares have still climbed 159% since the start of the year, powered by unrelenting demand for high-performance memory used in artificial intelligence workloads. The latest reshuffling nonetheless shows how twitchy the market has become about valuation and short-term sentiment.
Brokers See Margins Punching Through 80%
Attention now shifts to the company's upcoming quarterly report, and the numbers being circulated are striking. A consensus of eight brokerages puts third-quarter 2026 revenue at KRW 94.9883 trillion, with operating profit averaging KRW 74.3433 trillion. That would translate into an operating margin of 78% to 80%, building on the 76.3% the company already notched in the prior quarter.
Crossing the 80% threshold would install SK Hynix as only the third memory maker worldwide, after Micron, to reach that level of profitability. Shipments of the latest HBM4 generation stand to get an extra push from Nvidia's accelerator architectures.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SK Hynix?
The company's grip on the high-bandwidth memory business is the engine behind those figures. SK Hynix controls more than half of the entire HBM market and produces over 50% of all current HBM4 chips. FnGuide projects a 79% margin for the first quarter of 2027, while brokers see room for 82% to 83% in the summer half of that year.
Capex Supercycle Underwrites the Demand
What sustains this margin trajectory is a persistent memory shortage in the data-center segment. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta are together budgeting at least USD 300 billion for AI infrastructure in 2026. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won pointed to exactly that dynamic when he reiterated expectations of rapidly growing chip demand.
To serve that demand over the long haul and secure its technological interfaces, SK Hynix collaborates with TSMC on logic processes, among other partners. Management is also weighing additional tie-ups for future generations such as HBM4E. At subsidiary Solidigm — carved out of Intel's NAND business in 2021 — a range of financing options for further expansion is under review.
Solidigm's US Listing Takes Shape
Speculation around that subsidiary has sharpened. Bloomberg reported that Solidigm has tapped Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as underwriters for a potential US initial public offering. A Nasdaq debut could raise roughly USD 10 billion and would not arrive before 2027 at the earliest. SK Hynix, for its part, made clear that no formal decision on a listing has been taken.
Chey separately reaffirmed that SK Hynix wants to bring its planned manufacturing sites in Gwangju online as quickly as possible, citing surging semiconductor demand. No specific groundbreaking date was given.
Analysts Keep the Faith
Through the sector-wide consolidation and the Solidigm chatter, the bullish camp has held its ground. IBK Investment & Securities restated its "Buy" rating on Wednesday and kept its price target at KRW 4 million, leaning on the view that structural demand for advanced memory solutions remains intact. The coming earnings releases should reveal whether operating performance can continue to justify the semiconductor industry's ambitious valuations.
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