SK Hynix Accelerates with HBM... Stock Price Up 30% This Year

[Image source=Yonhap News]

원본보기 아이콘

SK Hynix has surged more than 30% since the beginning of this year, approaching 190,000 KRW. This is interpreted as attracting investment sentiment thanks to its dominance in the High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) market.

According to the Korea Exchange on the 5th, SK Hynix's stock price rose 32.0% from 142,400 KRW on January 2 to 188,000 KRW on April 4. The driving force behind the stock price was foreigners. Since the beginning of the year, foreigners alone have net purchased 1.7701 trillion KRW.

The background of the stock price increase is attributed to the evaluation that SK Hynix is leading the HBM market. HBM is a key component of AI semiconductors. SK Hynix is effectively supplying the 4th generation HBM, HBM3, exclusively to Nvidia, the leader in AI chips. Not stopping there, they announced that they are the world's first to mass-produce the 5th generation product 'HBM3E' and will supply it to Nvidia.

From a supply chain perspective, they are strengthening their alliance with Nvidia. On the previous day, SK Hynix announced that it will invest 5.2 trillion KRW to build a next-generation HBM production base in Indiana, USA. They plan to mass-produce products starting in the second half of 2028. This is the first time SK Hynix is building a production plant for HBM, a core of artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors, overseas.

The securities industry expects SK Hynix to maintain a dominant position in the HBM market for the time being. As of last year, SK Hynix holds a 53% market share in the HBM market, ranking first. Samsung Electronics holds about 38%.

Baek Gil-hyun, a researcher at Yuanta Securities, analyzed, "The Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) market is expected to continue high growth, approaching an average annual growth rate of 30% over the next five years from 2024," adding, "This will be accompanied by increased demand for high value-added memory semiconductors such as HBM." He further stated, "From the 7th generation HBM (HBM4E), the benefits from these market changes will be further strengthened," and "SK Hynix is expected to gradually increase its competitiveness in the HBM market going forward."

Kim Dong-won, a researcher at KB Securities, also forecasted that SK Hynix's DRAM and NAND average selling prices (ASP) will increase by 13% and 15%, respectively, in the second quarter. This diagnosis suggests that double-digit price increases will continue following the first quarter. Researcher Kim explained, "This is because the start of shipments of 8-stack HBM3E will lead to ASP increases, favorable legacy DRAM price negotiations are expected in the second quarter, and ASP increases are anticipated due to the surge in demand for AI data center storage eSSD."

© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.