SK Hynix filed with the SEC on Wednesday to raise approximately $29.65 billion through an American depositary receipt listing on the Nasdaq $NDAQ, in what would rank among the largest share sales in history.
Trading is expected to begin July 10, the company said, with up to 17.79 million new shares to be issued at a value of 45.45 trillion won. Each common share will be represented by ten ADRs, and Tuesday's closing price of 2.555 million won per share will serve as the basis for an initial range, with final pricing set following the bookbuilding process.
In scale, the offering would eclipse both Alibaba's 2014 U.S. listing and Saudi Aramco's $25.6 billion IPO from 2019, according to Reuters. SK Hynix said in the filing that it expects the ADR listing to expand its investor base and that it anticipates trading on Nasdaq alongside rival Micron $MU Technology will give it the opportunity to be valued in line with U.S. peers. "We expect to elevate our status as a global company by broadening our touchpoints in the United States, the epicenter of AI technological innovation," the company said in the filing.
Funds raised will go toward expanding fabrication capacity on the Korean peninsula and acquiring manufacturing equipment, among them extreme ultraviolet scanners from Dutch semiconductor tools company ASML $ASML, the company said. BofA Securities, Citigroup $C Global Markets, Goldman Sachs $GS, and J.P. Morgan Securities are managing the offering, the company said.
Among SK Hynix's biggest customers are Nvidia $NVDA and Alphabet $GOOGL's Google, both of which rely on the company's high-bandwidth memory chips for their AI infrastructure. Its market capitalization now stands at roughly $1.2 trillion, a milestone that pushed it past Samsung Electronics this week to claim the top spot among South Korean listed companies. SK Hynix stock has gained more than 300% this year.
The planned listing is substantially larger than what the company had signaled earlier in the year. When SK Hynix filed confidentially for a U.S. listing in March, a source had put the potential haul at no more than $14 billion. Separately, the chipmaker is developing its first American production site — a $4 billion packaging facility in Indiana — while a sprawling new fabrication campus in South Korea's Yongin region is on track to start operations in 2027, according to CNBC.