SK Hynix's 24% Surge Caps a Week That Pushed the Chairman to Buy Shares Personally
Published on 07/31/2026 at 05:20 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The whiplash hitting SK Hynix shareholders this week tells the story of a market struggling to price the memory-chip maker's paradox: record profits on one side, a brutal valuation reset on the other.
On Friday, the stock rocketed 24.13% to 1,641,000 won, rebounding from 1,322,000 won just a day earlier. The surge — the strongest single-day gain in the company's history at 28% intraday — came after US cloud giants delivered earnings that reignited faith in the artificial-intelligence spending cycle. Microsoft climbed 16% on Thursday as Azure growth beat expectations, Amazon jumped more than 9% after hours on strong cloud results, and the iShares Semiconductor ETF advanced over 8% overnight.
The relief washed directly into Seoul. Samsung Electronics added more than 20%, and the Kospi index climbed as much as 15% at one point, reaching its highest level in a month, according to Bloomberg.
A chairman's first-ever direct purchase
The rebound followed a decisive signal from inside the company. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won bought 3,620 common shares of SK Hynix on Thursday for roughly 4.79 billion won — his first direct purchase of the stock, after years of holding only indirectly through the group's investment vehicle SK Square. The order deliberately stayed under the 5 billion won threshold that would trigger a 30-day pre-disclosure requirement, as reported by Seoul Economic Daily.
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Chey framed the move in straightforward terms. "Memory chips will continue to be needed, and the share price will trend upward over time," he told The Korea Herald. He added that holding the stock is a sound way to preserve wealth, and Seoul Economic Daily reported that further purchases of similar size could follow.
The crash that preceded the comeback
The chairman's buy landed at the tail end of a punishing stretch. From the 52-week high of 2,987,000 won set on June 25, the stock had fallen 55.74% by Thursday's close of 1,322,000 won — a slide that included drops of roughly 14.65% on Monday and 9.61% on Wednesday. Even after Friday's surge, the shares remain 45% below that June peak, and the annualized 30-day volatility sits near 143%, underscoring just how violent the swings have become.
The sell-off was part of a broader Korean market correction. Foreign investors offloaded nearly 20 trillion won worth of SK Hynix and Samsung shares in July, according to International Business Times, while domestic retail investors bought in similar magnitude. Nomura analyst Cindy Park attributes the broader Korean decline to technical factors — net foreign selling of 15.8 trillion won between June 22 and July 24, plus capacity limits at the state pension fund — rather than deteriorating fundamentals.
Record results, tempered expectations
The contradiction at the heart of the move: SK Hynix posted extraordinary numbers for the second quarter of 2026. Revenue reached 79.3 trillion won, up 257% year over year, while operating profit climbed 557.2% to 60.5 trillion won. Yet that profit figure missed consensus estimates by roughly 6%.
The miss stems from long-term supply agreements covering about half of revenue, which limit the company's ability to fully pass through rising DRAM prices, according to TweakTown. Mass production of HBM4 has begun, and analysts expect memory-chip prices to rise over 30% in the third quarter with a supply deficit persisting through 2028.
The earlier sell-off had been fueled by a different dynamic. AI-adjacent memory chip stocks had climbed as much as 600% on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) shortages, then gave back 30% to 50% of those gains as supply expanded. The Kospi lost up to 29% within a month, dragging Nvidia and TSMC down with it. Notably, the rout began right after SK Hynix's earnings — despite the sixfold profit jump — as analysts concluded expectations had simply run too far.
Analyst targets diverge sharply
The post-earnings analyst reaction split in unusual fashion. Korea Investment & Securities raised its target 23.7% to 4.7 million won, citing ongoing AI infrastructure investment and looming memory shortages. Shinhan Investment cut its target to 2.7 million won. Other firms sit between 2.2 million and 3.4 million won, with most retaining buy ratings. Nomura has been among the most bullish, lifting its target from 2.34 million won in May to 4 million won, then to 4.7 million won in June.
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UBS initiated coverage of SK Hynix's Nasdaq-listed depositary receipts on Thursday with a buy rating and a $204 target, with analyst Nicolas Gaudois pointing to robust demand from agentic AI applications and an expected 48% market share in HBM this year. Barclays goes further with a $300 target.
Market leadership intact
Through the turbulence, SK Hynix's operational dominance in HBM remains the anchor. The company held a 56.4% global market share in high-bandwidth memory in the first quarter of 2026, ranked second in DRAM with 29.1%, and second in NAND flash with 18.5%. That positioning explains the stock's acute sensitivity to US cloud capital expenditure announcements — the spending plans of America's largest cloud providers directly determine demand for the memory chips underpinning the current AI buildout.
South Korea has suspended approvals for new leveraged single-stock ETFs after market observers said such products amplified the recent swings. For now, how far Friday's recovery carries over the coming sessions appears tightly coupled to the next round of capital expenditure guidance from the big US cloud players — and whether the chairman's personal bet proves as prescient as he expects.
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