Memory Chip Sector Shifts: SK Hynix to List in US, Is Micron Still Worth Buying?

TradingKey - On April 16, South Korean media outlet Herald Business revealed that SK Hynix is advancing its U.S. listing plans at a pace exceeding market expectations, targeting a window in June or July, which is a significant acceleration from the previously vague "listing within the year" guidance.

Last month, SK Hynix confidentially filed a Form F-1 with the U.S. SEC and has now clarified a specific timeline for underwriters: a U.S. roadshow will launch immediately following the first-quarter earnings disclosure in late April to gauge market demand. Industry insiders noted that the pace of this ADR listing will not be affected by short-term stock price fluctuations, reflecting Hynix's strategic priority to enter the U.S. financial market.

The central focus of the market is the scale of the fundraising. Investment banking circles generally expect this ADR issuance to raise up to $10 billion, a figure that would rank among the largest in the history of foreign companies listing in the U.S.

Why is SK Hynix in a rush to list in the U.S.?

The core logic behind SK Hynix's accelerated pursuit of a U.S. listing is not complex, but it involves two overlapping layers.

The first is the recalibration of valuation models. Using this year's earnings forecasts as a benchmark, SK Hynix's forward P/E ratio is only 3 to 4 times, while Micron ( MU) is approximately 8 times, and SanDisk ( SNDK) is nearly 19 times. SK Hynix is a major global supplier of HBM, but its valuation in South Korea has long been under pressure. Once the ADR is established, global capital will be able to purchase SK Hynix shares, and theoretically, its valuation will converge toward its U.S. peers.

Second, there are rigid constraints on capital expenditure. SK Hynix previously planned to invest a total of 600 trillion won in the Yongin semiconductor cluster in South Korea by 2050, with 21.6 trillion won to be deployed in the Phase 1 fab by the end of 2030. Earlier this year, the company established an AI solutions firm in the U.S. with an investment cap of $10 billion. As of the end of last year, cash on hand was approximately 35 trillion won, which is insufficient relative to the massive capital expenditure plans. Since Hynix cancelled nearly all of its 12.24 trillion won in treasury shares in January 2023, issuing new shares has become the sole financing option. Essentially, this ADR listing is about 'issuing shares to fund the future.'

How significant is the impact on Micron?

The most direct impact of SK Hynix's ADR listing on Micron is capital diversion. In the current U.S. stock market, among the global big three memory giants, Micron is the only pure-play target—while Samsung also has a memory business, its operations are too broad, spanning mobile phones, home appliances, and foundries, which dilutes the upside leverage of its memory segment. Micron is the sole pure player in the U.S. market truly benefiting from the "AI memory dividend."

Once SK Hynix enters the U.S. market, global investors looking to bet on the AI memory sector will have another option—one that is the world leader in HBM market share. Some analysts believe that the share price movements of the two companies' ADRs may tend to synchronize, as the listing itself does not change their fundamentals.

However, the erosion of this "pure-play premium" does not represent a systemic risk for Micron.

The memory chip industry is currently in a super upcycle. Micron's average selling price for DRAM rose by approximately 32% quarter-on-quarter in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, with analysts expecting year-on-year revenue growth to reach 148%. NVIDIA ( NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang stated at the GTC conference that by 2027, the volume of purchase orders for Blackwell and Vera Rubin GPUs will need to reach $1 trillion, with a single Rubin Ultra GPU equipped with 1TB of HBM4e high-performance memory. There are currently no signs of demand-side certainty weakening. Micron has previously stated that its HBM capacity for 2026 is already fully sold out.

Micron's expansion of its own production capacity has not stopped, with capital expenditures for fiscal 2026 expected to exceed $25 billion. Although Micron lagged in the first round of the HBM4 race due to technical roadmap obstacles, it will not participate in the HBM4 supply chain for the first year of mass production of NVIDIA's Rubin architecture GPUs, with initial orders split between SK Hynix and Samsung. However, Micron is currently redesigning its base die and plans to pass NVIDIA's HBM4 qualification in the second quarter.

In addition, Micron's latest financial guidance projects that third-quarter revenue could reach $33.5 billion, representing growth of over 200% compared to the $9.3 billion recorded in the same period last year.

SK Hynix, Micron, and Samsung’s HBM Capacity Race

Disregarding short-term capital considerations, the more critical variable behind SK Hynix's U.S. listing is the global arms race in HBM production capacity.

The big three are currently in an all-out scramble for ASML's EUV lithography machines. SK Hynix is moving aggressively to lock in capacity, Micron is investing $25 billion in the construction of multiple fabs, and Samsung is committing 110 trillion won to support HBM4 technology. In the first quarter of this year, South Korea's contribution to ASML's revenue reached 45%, historically surpassing China to become the largest market, primarily because the three memory giants are vying for equipment.

Why is the competition so fierce? Because the price of 12-layer stacked HBM3 products has skyrocketed by 260%. As the nerve center of AI chips, HBM requires more advanced manufacturing processes as stack counts increase, making mass production impossible without EUV lithography machines.

In this competition, SK Hynix currently holds the upper hand with a market share of over 60% in the HBM market. Raising $10 billion to expand its Yongin cluster and HBM capacity will only further widen the gap with its pursuers. Micron plans to capture about 20% of the HBM market share by 2026, up from the estimated 15% in 2025. This goal is set conservatively, but it remains a challenge due to difficulties in HBM4 certification.

Valuation Anchor Recalibration, Not a Fundamental Reversal

Overall, SK Hynix's U.S. listing is expected to compress Micron's valuation elasticity in the short term as capital is diverted and its "sole-play" premium diminishes. Once the ADR is listed, valuation benchmarking between Micron and SK Hynix will become more transparent—given Micron's current 8x P/E versus SK Hynix's 3x to 4x, the market will ultimately decide which way the valuation converges.

However, taking a longer-term view, the surge in demand for AI memory is far from peaking. The capital expenditures of Nvidia and Amazon ( AMZN ), Google ( GOOGL) continue to be revised upward, and the memory shortage is expected to persist for another four to five years. In this supercycle, Micron is no longer the only option, but it remains an indispensable play.