Why Is SK Hynix’s Stock Falling Instead of Rising as It Prepares for a US Listing?

TradingKey - SK hynix's stock price weakened ahead of its US listing, primarily due to multiple pressures including market shifts and pricing pressure.

During Asian trading hours on July 7, memory giant SK hynix extended its losses. The stock opened lower and continued to slide, falling nearly 160,000 KRW during the day, a decline of 6.7%, to temporarily trade at 2,186,000 KRW. With SK hynix set to list in the US, why did its stock price fall instead of rise?

On June 30, SK hynix announced the launch of its US IPO process, and its stock price rose slightly that day, reaching a high of 274,900 KRW. Since then, SK hynix's stock price has continued to weaken, falling to a low of 205,000 KRW on June 3, resulting in a maximum drawdown of 25%.

This "US listing" by SK hynix was originally the most highly anticipated, epic listing event in the global semiconductor industry this year. The reason it turned into a stagnant situation where the stock price "fell instead of rose" in the short term is due to a combination of shifting macro market trends, pricing pressure from new share dilution, and short-term capital rushing to exit after the good news materialized.

From late June to early July, Wall Street began to reflect on the tech giants spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build AI data centers while lacking sufficient monetization capabilities in the short term. In particular, Meta's ( META) move to sell computing power exacerbated concerns. At the same time, the market raised doubts about the massive $500 billion expansion plans of Samsung and SK hynix, as well as whether high-bandwidth memory (HBM) might face oversupply in the short term.

The latest regulatory filing submitted by SK hynix on July 6 showed that the listing reference price was lowered from 2.555 million KRW in late June to 2.425 million KRW at the close on July 3, and the fundraising size also shrunk by $1 billion. This situation of "the closer to the listing, the lower the reference price" dented the confidence of bulls to chase higher prices.

In the first half of 2026, driven by the AI craze, SK hynix's cumulative year-to-date gain once wildly surged past 260%, making it one of the most crowded and highly leveraged stocks in South Korea. Recently, former presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo and the Bank of Korea warned of the amplified risks of such leveraged ETFs and even called for their delisting, a move that undoubtedly threw cold water on the market.

SK hynix Stock Price Chart, Source: TradingView

On July 10, SK hynix will officially list on the US Nasdaq and is expected to be included in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX). At that time, massive US passive index funds (such as SOXX) will be forced to unconditionally enter the market and allocate capital, providing an extremely strong stock price moat for SK hynix. However, if it loses the buying support of these passive funds, SK hynix is highly likely to continue falling and test the support level at 180,000 KRW again.