South Korea’s SK Hynix raises $26.5bn in record-breaking US IPO
South Korean chip giant SK Hynix has raised a record-breaking $26.5bn ahead of its <a href="https://todaytrendnews7.com/sk-hynix-hasnt-even-started-trading-and-wall-street-is-already-turning-up-the-risk/” title=”SK hynix Hasn't Even Started Trading, and Wall Street Is Already Turning Up the Risk”>Wall Street debut amid soaring demand for semiconductors used in AI
SK Hynix said on Friday that it had sold 177.9 million American depositary shares (ADS) at $149 each ahead of its listing on the New York-based Nasdaq stock exchange, News.Az reports, citing Al Jazeera
ADS are US dollar-denominated shares of a foreign company that can be bought and sold on the US market
SK Hynix’s 177.9 million ADSs are equivalent to 18 million ordinary shares
SK Hynix’s initial public offering (IPO) marks the largest-ever listing by a foreign company in the US, surpassing Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s $25bn debut in 2014
The listing also ranks as the second-largest globally, after SpaceX’s record-breaking $85.7bn Nasdaq listing in June
Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the listing was more than seven times oversubscribed
Dilin Wu, a research strategist at Pepperstone in Melbourne, Australia, said the market reception had exceeded “even the most optimistic expectations”
“Seven times oversubscribed, about $171bn in orders for a $24-28bn deal, and this happened while the semiconductor sector was actively selling off and the Kospi was in a circuit breaker week,” Wu told Al Jazeera, referring to South Korea’s benchmark stock market index
“I think the SK Hynix ADR pricing says one thing very clearly: the AI memory cycle is real, the earnings are real, and global capital has simply never had easy access to the best pure memory play in the space,” Wu said
