South Korean chip giant SK hynix set pricing for its mega US listing on Friday, raising $26.5 billion as it takes advantage of the AI boom in what will be one of the world’s biggest ever stock sales.
The Asian semiconductor giant plans to issue the equivalent of around 18 million shares on Wall Street’s tech-heavy Nasdaq index later in the day.
SK hynix, a supplier of advanced memory chips to industry behemoth Nvidia, has seen profits skyrocket thanks to the global race to build artificial intelligence data centres.
Tech stocks have tumbled in recent weeks on fears of overheated valuations — SK hynix has soared more than 220 percent this year in Seoul — and questions about when enormous global AI spending will reap returns.
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But Friday’s Nasdaq listing has enjoyed considerable interest, and was more than seven times oversubscribed, according to US media.
The amount raised did not come close to the record $75 billion raised in SpaceX’s IPO last month, which made founder Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
But it beat out Saudi Aramco’s 2019 $25.6 billion debut in the Gulf, and the $21.8 billion raised by Chinese tech firm Alibaba in its New York initial public offering.
SK hynix will list through something called American depositary shares (ADSs), which allow slices of foreign companies to be traded on US public markets.
The firm said 177.9 million depositary shares, each representing one-tenth of a usual share, had been set “at an initial public offering price of $149.00 per ADS”.
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Dilin Wu, research strategist at Pepperstone, told AFP that the pricing says clearly that “the AI memory cycle is real, the earnings are real”.
Wu earlier called the listing “a huge development that should broaden the capital base for the memory sector”.
The offering is being led by BofA Securities, Citigroup Global Markets, Goldman Sachs (Asia) and JP Morgan Securities, SK hynix said.
SK hynix shares jumped 2.7 percent on Seoul’s Kospi index following the announcement.
