[Edaily Reporter Kwon Oh Seok ] SK hynix(000660), South Korea’s second-largest company by market capitalization, posted its best-ever quarterly earnings in the second quarter of this year, driven by increased sales of high-performance memory for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Despite these strong earnings, the company’s stock price has continued to decline.

SK hynix announced on the 29th that it posted revenue of 79.3187 trillion won and operating profit of 60.5426 trillion won in the second quarter of this year. Both revenue and operating profit reached all-time highs on a quarterly basis, with revenue surging 256.8% year-over-year. Operating profit rose 557.2% year-over-year, and the operating profit margin stood at 76%, up 4 percentage points from the previous quarter’s 72%.
However, despite these record-breaking results, the company fell short of market expectations. It slightly missed the initial second-quarter consensus (the average of securities firms’ estimates) of 83.9391 trillion won in revenue and 63.9868 trillion won in operating profit. Perhaps as a result, as of 8:19 a.m., SK hynix’s stock price in the pre-market was trading at 1,497,000 won, down 3.42% from the previous trading day, and had at one point fallen by as much as 6%.
With the view that AI investments have peaked already widespread across the market, the semiconductor sector as a whole—including SK hynix’s American Depositary Receipts (ADRs)—continues to plummet. On the 28th (local time), SK hynix’s ADRs fell 8.98% on the New York Stock Exchange, marking their third consecutive trading day of declines. This price is approximately 13% below the initial public offering price of $149.
Nevertheless, the securities industry remains optimistic. Son In-jun, an analyst at EUGENE INVESTMENT & SECURITIES, stated, “HBM4 appears to have begun shipping at the end of the second quarter, so we expect it to contribute to earnings in the second half of the year.” He added, “Price negotiations for the second half are proceeding favorably, and we believe earnings for the third quarter and beyond are highly likely to exceed the market’s lowered expectations.”
He continued, “Given the limited supply of ADRs, high accessibility for U.S. investors, and restrictions on conversion and arbitrage between the underlying shares and ADRs, it is difficult to expect short-term price convergence,” but added, “In the long term, the expansion of the global investor base, inflows of foreign demand, and inclusion in ETFs (exchange-traded funds) are expected to have a positive impact on the underlying stock price.”