SK Hynix Charts Custom Memory Course as Record Profits Fuel $5 Trillion Korean Market Milestone
02.06.2026 - 07:53:38 | boerse-global.de
The message from Chey Tae-won and Kwak Noh-jung at NVIDIA GTC Taipei on June 1 could not have been clearer: SK Hynix is no longer content to be just a high-volume supplier of standard High-Bandwidth Memory. The SK Group chairman and the chipmaker’s CEO unveiled plans to develop customized HBM solutions tailored to individual client architectures, repositioning the company as a “Full-Stack AI Memory Creator” that gets embedded deeper into system design. Customized HBM, or cHBM, will sit alongside HBM4, High Bandwidth Flash, and 3D stacked DRAM on logic in a product roadmap that prizes design integration over wafer tonnage.
That strategic pivot rests on an extraordinarily strong financial foundation. In the first quarter of 2026, SK Hynix posted revenue of 52.6 trillion won, an operating profit of 37.6 trillion won, and net income of 40.3 trillion won — all record highs. The operating margin hit 72%, a figure that underscores just how leveraged the company is to red-hot AI memory demand. Cash and cash equivalents swelled by 19.4 trillion won quarter-on-quarter to 54.3 trillion won, while interest-bearing debt shrank to 19.3 trillion won, leaving net cash of 35 trillion won. Management attributed the results to rising sales of premium HBM, server DRAM modules, and enterprise SSDs as hyperscalers pour money into AI infrastructure.
Alongside this corporate strength, South Korea’s equity market has notched a landmark of its own. The combined market capitalization of Korean-listed companies surged 86% this year to roughly $5 trillion, overtaking India ($4.8 trillion) to claim sixth place globally, according to Bloomberg data. SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics — both now members of the billion-dollar club — have led the charge, capitalizing on their dominance in the AI memory supply chain. The KOSPI index hit a fresh all-time high of 8,883 points on Tuesday before profit-taking knocked it back 0.68% to 8,729. SK Hynix shares slipped 1.86% on the session, while Samsung added 3.58%.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SK Hynix?
For SK Hynix specifically, the stock has been on a tear. It closed near 2.31 million won, up 241.8% since the start of the year and just below its 52-week peak. The relative strength index sits at 68.9 — heading into overbought territory but not yet flashing alarm signals. Annualized volatility of 77.8% reflects the cyclical drama of the memory market. The earlier article noted a price of 2.29 million won, 3.05% below the previous week’s high, illustrating the small pullbacks that punctuate this rally.
Yet the valuation debate is intensifying. The Korean market’s re-rating has been heavily driven by the memory cycle and the AI narrative, but market observers caution that sustaining the momentum will require more than just chip demand. Corporate governance reforms — long a sticking point for foreign investors — will need to deliver real change. SK Hynix itself points to supply discipline and capacity constraints; the company says customer demand still outstrips production capacity, and it is ramping up investments focused on the M15X ramp, the Yongin cluster infrastructure, and EUV lithography tools.
For investors, the key question is whether SK Hynix’s move into customized memory can lock in the kind of sticky, long-term relationships that justify its current multiple. The deep engagement with NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin roadmap, signaled at the GTC Taipei event and reinforced by a separate “Korean Partner Night” hosted by Jensen Huang, suggests the company is already embedding itself in the next generation of AI accelerators. If cHBM and its successors become design wins rather than commodity orders, SK Hynix may be able to extend its run well beyond the current cycle.
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SK Hynix Stock: New Analysis - 2 June
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