SK Hynix plans $29 billion US IPO, potentially largest ADR ever

SK Hynix has submitted plans to raise up to 45.45 trillion won , roughly $29 billion , through a listing of American depositary receipts (ADRs) on the Nasdaq, according to a regulatory filing released Wednesday. The South Korean memory chip giant has tentatively scheduled its debut for July 10, issuing 17.79 million new shares to back the receipts, with each 10 ADRs representing one common share.

If priced at the top of the indicated range, this offering would surpass Alibaba’s $21.8 billion New York debut in 2014, making it the largest ADR sale on record. However, the headline figure carries a notable detail: the destination of the funds is unusually specific for a deal of this magnitude. SK Hynix stated that the entire proceeds will finance capacity expansion, naming a chip fabrication plant in Yongin, an advanced-packaging fab in Cheongju, and equipment purchases including extreme ultraviolet scanners , the lithography machines that print the smallest features on a wafer. None of the capital is earmarked for shareholders or debt repayment.

For a company whose order book is already full, this raise reads less like a war chest and more like a bill. SK Hynix is the world’s second-largest memory maker and the dominant supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) , the stacked DRAM that sits beside Nvidia’s accelerators, feeding them data. That position, rather than any broad recovery in commodity chips, has propelled the share price. Industry estimates place SK Hynix at roughly 60 to 70 percent of the HBM4 volume allocated to Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform, well ahead of Samsung and Micron. The multi-year deal with Nvidia signed this month formalized the company as a co-development partner rather than a mere vendor.

The size of the planned raise has escalated rapidly. When the prospect first surfaced, figures ranged from about $10 billion to $14 billion for a U. S. listing as soon as August. By June 16, bankers cited up to 40 trillion won ($26.5 billion) . The 45.45 trillion won now in the filing is larger still, and the timeline has pulled forward to July.

Underwriting the deal are BofA Securities, Citigroup Global Markets, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan Securities. The listing arrives days after a milestone that gave it pricing leverage. On June 22, SK Hynix passed Samsung in market value to become South Korea’s most valuable listed company on a common-stock basis , the first change at the top of the Korea Exchange since Samsung claimed it in November 2000. A month earlier, the company had crossed $1 trillion in market capitalization, the third chip company to do so after Nvidia and TSMC.

The run behind those figures has been steep. SK Hynix shares have risen several hundred percent over the past two years, and the company overtook Samsung on annual profit for the first time in January. A Nasdaq listing gives international investors a way to own that growth without trading in Seoul, and gives SK Hynix dollars for the fabs it has already committed to.

The filing does not settle the question that hangs over every memory cycle. The business is famously cyclical, and the current upswing is being priced as though it will not turn. HBM capacity for 2026 is sold out, and shortages are forecast into 2027, but SK Hynix is raising money to expand for demand stretching well beyond that.

The filing is a regulatory milestone, not a closed deal. Pricing, share count, and the listing date can still move, and the figures depend on a U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission review expected in the coming weeks. If the deal prices at the top of its range on July 10, SK Hynix will have written the largest ADR offering in history. The harder number to forecast is how long the appetite that justifies it lasts.