SK Hynix
What SK Hynix is up to now
The incumbent under the sharpest shock in the trio: ~55% HBM share, first through Nvidia's HBM4 qualification (reportedly 60-70% of Vera Rubin volume), AI/datacenter now ~70% of revenue — and the actual origin of the 'three-year HBM deficit' claim (its own Q1 CFO guidance). Took the worst single-day hit on the board: -14.65% in the 07-28 'Black Tuesday' Seoul selloff, the market's first sharp repricing of CXMT as a real threat. Q2 print 07-29, guided to a record ~$43.7B operating profit.
as of 2026-07-28
Pocket
Chips
The metrics
- Posture med
- expanding 1 src →
- Capital · available high
- ~$28-29B readily-liquid (cash 21.17T KRW + ST inv 18.25T KRW = 39.42T KRW / ~1,380); net cash ~$12.7B (total debt 21.83T KRW ~$15.8B). NB board.yaml cites ~$39B cash+STI, higher — likely … 2 src →
- Capital · operating high
- ~$30B/yr FCF (TTM 41.79T KRW / ~1,380); TTM operating cash flow ~$51B (70.68T KRW); FY2025 FCF ~$18.7B (25.85T KRW) 1 src →
- Capital · deployed high
- ~$21B/yr capex (TTM 28.89T KRW ~$20.9B) — HBM/DRAM capacity (M15X, Yongin); FY2025 capex 27.52T KRW ~$19.9B 1 src →
- Capital · in high
- FY2025 revenue ~$70B (97.15T KRW); TTM revenue ~$96B (132.08T KRW, HBM surge); TTM net income ~$54B (75.14T KRW) 1 src →
- Capital · out high
- capex ~$21B/yr dominates; dividends modest (not separately fetched — low confidence on the dividend line) 1 src →
- Optionality med
- mixed — strong FCF but capex-cyclical and HBM-capacity-committed; SK chaebol control (SK Square / SK group) 1 src →
- Gravity med
- ~$70-96B/yr GROSS direct revenue — supplies the HBM the whole AI buildout needs (Nvidia primary), ~29% of DRAM revenue; gated AI-infra far larger 1 src →
This week — what changed
- Korea's "Black Tuesday" session closed −10–11% with circuit breakers — SK Hynix below $140 (−10-13%), Samsung down with it; China chip-competition fear compounding AI volatility. SK Hynix reports within 24h. ([Reuters/Korea Times])
- Samsung chip workers reportedly jumping to SK Hynix — the squeeze's labor-market symptom; MIT TR pins the driver: a ~100x bonus gap.
- Anthropic asked SK Hynix + Samsung for chip supply — a new demand-side actor joins the memory queue (Bloomberg/Digitimes 07-25/27).
Projects & threads
·
Memory Squeeze
scarcity
— developing · last seen 2026-07-28
· 6 entries
Full item history for SK Hynix →
Vocabulary